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Astrophil and Stella 106: "O absent presence, Stella is not here"

By Sir Philip Sidney 1554–1586 Philip Sidney

O absent presence, Stella is not here;

False flattering hope, that with so fair a face

Bare me in hand, that in this orphan place

Stella, I say my Stella, should appear.

What say’st thou now? Where is that dainty cheer

Thou told’st mine eyes should help their famished case?

But thou art gone, now that self-felt disgrace

Doth make me most to wish thy comfort near.

But here I do store of fair ladies meet,

Who may with charm of conversation sweet

Make in my heavy mould new thoughts to grow:

Sure they prevail as much with me, as he

That bade his friend, but then new maimed, to be

Merry with him, and not think of his woe.

Biography

The grandson of the Duke of Northumberland and heir presumptive to the earls of Leicester and Warwick, Sir Philip Sidney was not himself a nobleman. Today he is closely associated in the popular imagination with the court of Elizabeth I, though he spent relatively little time at the English court, and until his appointment as governor of Flushing in 1585 received little preferment from Elizabeth. Viewed in his own age as the . . .

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