| Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904. | | | | Astrophel and Stella | | CII. Where be those roses gone, which sweetened so our eyes? | | Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586) |
| | | WHERE be those roses gone, which sweetened so our eyes? | |
| Where those red cheeks, which oft with fair increase did frame | |
| The height of honour, in the kindly badge of shame? | |
| Who hath the crimson weeds stolen from my morning skies? | |
| How doth the colour vade of those vermilion dyes | 5 |
| Which Nature’s self did make, and self engrained the same? | |
| I would know by what right this paleness overcame | |
| That hue, whose force my heart still unto thraldom ties? | |
| GALEN’s adoptive sons, who by a beaten way | |
| Their judgments hackney on, the fault on sickness lay: | 10 |
| But feeling proof makes me (say they) mistake it far. | |
| It is but LOVE that makes his paper perfect white, | |
| To write therein more fresh the story of delight: | |
| While beauty’s reddest ink, VENUS for him doth stir. | | | | |
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