A Farewell

Sir Philip Sidney

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
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;
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.

* * *

Finding those beams, which I must ever love,
To mar my mind, and with my hurt to please,
I deemed it best, some absence for to prove,
If farther place might further me to ease.

My eyes thence drawn, where lived all their light,
Blinded forthwith in dark despair did lie,
Like to the mole, with want of guiding sight,
Deep plunged in earth, deprived of the sky.

In absence blind, and wearied with that woe,
To greater woes, by presence, I return;
Even as the fly, which to the flame doth go,
Pleased with the light, that his small corse doth burn:

Fair choice I have, either to live or die
A blinded mole, or else a burned fly.

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