Page:An English Garner Ingatherings from Our History and Literature (Volume 1 1877).pdf/303

KNOWLEDGE her light hath lost; VALOUR 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 springtide."
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 mind,
A spotless friend, a matchless man, whose virtue ever shined:
Declaring in his thoughts, his life, and that he writ;
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.