as they.' The word 'almost' should be supplanted by the word 'fully'; and the criticism would then be no less adequate than apt. Sidney himself might have applauded the verses which clothe with living music a passion as fervent and as fiery a fancy as his own. Not even in the rapturous melodies of that matchless series of songs and sonnets which glorify the inseparable names of Astrophel and Stella will the fascinated student find a passage more enchanting than this.
Thou art a traitor to that white and red
Which sitting on her cheeks (being Cupid's throne)
Is my heart's sovereign: O, when she is dead,
This wonder, Beauty, shall be found in none.
Now Agripyne's not mine, I vow to be
In love with nothing but deformity.
O fair Deformity, I muse all eyes
Are not enamoured of thee: thou didst never
Murder men's hearts, or let them pine like wax,
Melting against the sun of thy disdain;[1]
Thou art a faithful nurse to Chastity;
Thy beauty is not like to Agripyne's,
For cares, and age, and sickness, hers deface,
But thine's eternal: O Deformity,
Thy fairness is not like to Agripyne's,
For, dead, her beauty will no beauty have,
But thy face looks most lovely in the grave.
- ↑ As even Lamb allowed the meaningless and immetrical word 'destiny' to stand at the end of this line in place of the obviously right reading, it is not wonderful that all later editors of this passage should hitherto have done so.
