| Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904. | | | | Sonnets and Poetical Translations | | XXII. Oft have I mused, but now at length I find | | Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586) |
| | A Farewell
[First printed in Constable’s Diana, 1594.]
OFT have I mused, but now at length I find | |
| Why those that die, men say, “they do depart.” | |
| “Depart!” A word so gentle, to my mind, | |
| Weakly did seem to paint death’s ugly dart. | |
| But now the stars, with their strange course do bind | 5 |
| Me one to leave, with whom I leave my heart: | |
| I hear a cry of spirits, faint and blind, | |
| That parting thus, my chiefest part, I part. | |
| Part of my life, the loathed part to me, | |
| Lives to impart my weary clay some breath: | 10 |
| But that good part, wherein all comforts be, | |
| Now dead, doth show departure is a death. | |
| Yea, worse than death! Death parts both woe and joy. | |
| From joy I part, still living in annoy. | | | | |
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