Ring Out Your Bells

Ring Out Your Bells
Sir Phillip Sidney

Ring out your bells, let mourning shows be spread,
For Love is dead.
All Love is dead, infected
With plague of deep disdain;
Worth as naught worth rejected,

And Faith fair scorn doth gain,
From so ungrateful fancy,
From such a female franzy,
From them that use men thus,
Good Lord, deliver us!

Weedp, neighbours, weep; do you not hear it said
That Love is dead?
His deathbed peacock's folly
His winding sheet is shame,
His will false-seeming holy,
His sole exec'tor blame.
From so ungrateful fancy,...

Let dirge be sung and trentals rightly read,
For Love is dead.
Sir Wrong his tomb ordaineth
My mistress, marble heart,
Which epitaph containeth,
"Her eyes were once his dart."
From so ungrateful fancy,...

Alas, I lie, rage hath this error bred;
Love is not dead.
Love is not dead, but sleepeth
In her unmatched mind,
While she his counsel keepeth,
Til due desert she find.
Therefore from so vile fancy,
To call such wit a franzy,
Who Love can temper thus,
Good Lord, deliver us!

Well... I happened to come across Sidney's poem while just flipping through the anthology this evening. I tend to read more modern poems; however, I know that Sidney is classified as one of the great poets of his time, so I thought I'd give him a shot! I really enjoyed the repetition and simplicity of the line "For Love is dead". I'm not too sure how to explain how this struck me, yet its bluntness was so realistic and catching that I couldn't help but read on. I think that its those qualitities throughout the poem that captivated me: lines like "infected with plauge of deep disdain" and "let dirge be sung and trentals rightly read". These lines were so sorrowful and straightforward that there seemed to be a true honesty that emerges. The general rhyming scheme was easy to follow, yet was slightly irregular at times (mostly the beginning and end), but from what I could tell, it was a,a,b,c,b,c,d through the central portion of the poem. The epiphany of the last stanza "love is not dead, but sleepeth" offers hope to balance the negativity of the rest of the poetry. Overall, I throughly enjoyed the overall mood and style of this particular poem, and I am struck by the fact that it was written in the 16thc and yet I found it so relevant and interesting! Silly ignorant me! I think I may have to explore some more....