"If more may be said, I say
All my bliss on thee I lay.
If thou love, my love content thee!
For all love, all faith is meant thee."
"Trust me, while I thee deny,
In myself the smart I try.
Tyrant HONOUR doth thus use thee.
STELLA'S self might not refuse thee!"
"Therefore, Dear! this no more move:
Lest, though I leave not thy love,
Which too deep in me is framed;
I should blush when thou art named!"
It was the result of this noble firmness that a kiss stolen while she was asleep, was the height of SIDNEY'S indiscretion. He says, truly, at page 538:-
So while thy beauty draws the heart to love,
As fast thy virtue bends that love to good.
Thus in the midst of all her hateful surroundings, she redeemed her own true love from all that was base or ignoble; ever pointing him upward, and moving him to the highest self-conquest and Christian chivalry: and he has for ever glorified her in such verse, as no other English Lady has ever been celebrated with. So she comes down to us depicted by her poet-lover as the very apotheosis of all that is most delightful, most tender, most beautiful, and most honourable in woman.
VII.
Sidney, very careful of his writings, was very shy or indifferent
as to their publication. The following letter written in
November 1586, though it does not mention these Sonnets;
yet shows us on what principle they with his other works
were afterwards published.
