Poem of the week: Sonnet XXXI by Sir Philip Sidney

• Carol Rumens - guardian.co.uk, Monday 5 March 2012 

'With how sad steps, O Moone, thou climb'st the skies' ... Photograph: Patrick Pleul/EPA

Sir Philip Sidney said he had merely "slipt into the title of a Poet," perhaps with some truth, since Queen Elizabeth I mistrusted him, and left him sometimes under-employed in her service. He nevertheless wrote a powerful Defence of Poesie which has resonance for our own time. "The poet nothing affirmeth and therefore never lieth," he famously claimed, and much practice and theory still agree with him. The "Defence" reminds us that poetry in England (though not in Wales or Ireland) had its mocking detractors even in that Elizabethan golden age. Serious as his arguments are, Sidney's peroration culminates playfully, with a curse: he warns the detractors of poetry that "while you live you live in love and never get favour for lacking skill of a Sonet, and when you die your memorie die from the earth for want of an Epitaph".


Sonnet XXXI

With how sad steps, O Moone, thou climb'st the skies!
How silently, and with how wanne a face!
What, may it be that even in heavenly place
That busy archer his sharpe arrowes tries?
Sure, if that long-with-Love-acquainted eyes
Can judge of love, thou feel'st a Lover's case;
I read it in thy lookes; thy languisht grace
To me that feele the like, thy state descries.
Then, even of fellowship, O Moone, tell me,
Is constant Love deem'd there but want of wit?
Are beauties there as proud as here they be?
Do they above love to be lov'd, and yet
Those Lovers scorn whom that Love doth possesse?
Do they call vertue there, ungratefulnesse?

Read full story at The Guardian.