Elegy on the Death of Sidney
By Fulke
Greville (1554-1628)
(posted Wednesday, Feb.
4)
To hear Robert Pinsky read
"Elegy on the Death of Sidney," click .
Fulke
Greville deserves to be better known; I personally consider him to be an equal
of Donne, Marvell, Jonson, and the Shakespeare of the sonnets. He was a boyhood
friend of Sir Philip Sidney. (An early school notebook of Sidney's contains, in
Sidney's childish handwriting, the notation "Fulk Grivil is a good boy.")
Greville's admiring biography of his friend, who died young, may have somewhat
eclipsed Greville's own reputation. It is important for the reader of the
"Elegy on the Death of Sidney" to realize that Sidney--a brilliant writer, of
extremely noble family, a statesman and soldier who died of war wounds at the
age of 32--was looked on as a kind of perfect man: one born with the greatest
advantages, who had the talent and goodness to make the best of them. (This
poem is sometimes attributed to another author, Sir Edward Dyer, also a member
of the Sidney-Greville circle.)
--Robert Pinsky
Silence augmenteth grief,
writing increaseth rage,Staled are my thoughts, which loved and lost the wonder
of our age;Yet quickened now with fire, though dead with frost ere now,Enraged
I write I know not what; dead, quick, I know not how.
Hard-hearted minds relent
and rigor's tears abound,And envy strangely rues his end, in who no fault was
found.Knowledge her light hath lost, valor hath slain her knight,Sidney is
dead, dead is my friend, dead is the world's delight.
Place, pensive, wails his
fall whose presence was her pride;Time crieth out, My ebb is come; his life was
my spring tide.Fame mourns in that she lost the ground of her reports;Each
living wight laments his lack, and all in sundry sorts.
He was--woe worth that
word!--to each well-thinking mindA spotless friend, a matchless man, whose
virtue ever shined;Declaring in his thoughts, his life and that he
write,Highest conceits, longest foresights, and deepest works of wit.
He, only like himself, was
second unto none.Whose death, though life, we rue and wrong, and all in vain do
moan;Their loss, not him, wail they that fill the world with cries;Death slew
not him, but he made death his ladder to the skies.
Now sink of sorrow I who
live--the more the wrong!Who wishing death, whom death denies, whose thread is
all too long;Who tied to wretched life, who looks for no relief,Must spend my
ever dying days in never ending grief.
Heart's ease and only I,
like parallels, run on,Whose equal length keep equal breadth and never meet in
one;Yet for not wronging him, my thoughts, my sorrow's cell,Shall not run out,
though leak they will for liking him so well.
Farewell to you, my hopes,
my wonted waking dreams;Farewell, sometimes enjoyed joy, eclipsed are thy
beams;Farewell, self-pleasing thoughts which quietness brings forth;And
farewell, friendship's sacred league, uniting minds of worth.
And farewell, merry heart,
the gift of guiltless minds,And all sports which for life's restore variety
assigns.Let all that sweet is, void; in me no mirth may dwell:Philip, the cause
of all this woe, my life's content, farewell!
Now rime, the son of rage,
which art no kin to skill,And endless grief, which deads my life, yet knows not
how to kill,Go seek that hapless tomb, which if ye hap to find,Salute the
stones that keep the bones that held so good a mind.
