nt manner. Penelope, the Stella of
Sidney's verse, was, very much against her will, compelled at last by
her family to marry the wealthy Lord Rich, and then Sidney awoke to his
fate: what he had believed to be mere inclination, a light feeling of
which he would always remain the master, had from the first been Love,
irrepressible, unconquerable love:

"I might;--unhappie word--O me, I might,
And then would not, or could not see my blisse;
Till now wrapt in a most infernall night,
I find how heav'nly day, wretch! I did miss."[177]

He remained a lover of Stella, saw her, wrote to her, sang of her, and
at length ascertained that she too, despite her marriage ties, loved
him. He continued then, in altered tones, the magnificent series of
sonnets dedicated to her and which read still like a love-drama of real
life, a love-drama which is all summarized in the beautiful and
well-known dirge:

"Ring out your belles, let mourning shewes be spread;
For Love is dead:
All Love is dead, infected
With plague of deep disdaine:
Worth, as nought worth, rejected
And Faith faire scorne doth game.
From so ungratefull fancie,
From such a femall franzie
From them that use men thus,
Good Lord, deliver us!

Weepe, neighbours, weepe; do you not heare it said
That Love is dead?

* * * * *

Alas! I lie: rage hath this errour bred;
Love is not dead;
Love is not dead, but sleepeth
In her unmatched mind,
Where she his counsell keepeth,
Till due desert she find.
Therefore from so vile fancie
To call such wit a franzie,
Who Love can temper thus,
Good Lord, deliver us!"

Love that was not dead but asleep awoke, and Sidney's raptures were
again expressed in his verse:

"O joy too high for my low stile to show!...
For Stella hath, with words where faith doth shine,
Of her high heart giv'n me the monarchie:
I, I, O I, may say that she is mine."[178]

This lasted some time and when love faded away, at least in Stella's
fickle heart, "Astrophel" wrote the real dirge of his passion.

Sidney had nevertheless continued his active life all this while,
sometimes at court and sometimes on the continent, recognized as a
statesman by statesmen, as a poet by poets, as a perfect knight by all
experts in knightly accomplishments. Sp