It is not long, since these two eyes beheld A mightie Prince, of most renowmed race, Whom England high in count of honour held, And greatest ones did sue to gaine his grace; Of greatest ones he, greatest in his place, Sate in the bosome of his Soveraine, And _Right and loyall_ did his word maintaine.
I saw him die, I saw him die, as one Of the meane people, and brought foorth on beare; I saw him die, and no man left to mone His dolefull fate, that late him loved deare: Scarse anie left to close his eylids neare; Scarse anie left upon his lips to laie The sacred sod, or Requiem to saie.
O! trustless state of miserable men, That builde your blis on hope of earthly thing, And vainlie thinke your selves halfe happie then, When painted faces with smooth flattering Doo fawne on you, and your wide praises sing; And, when the courting masker louteth lowe, Him true in heart and trustie to you trow.
For Sidney, the darling of the time, who had been to him not merely a cordial friend, but the realized type of all that was glorious in manhood, and beautiful in character and gifts, his mourning was more than that of a looker-on at a moving instance of the frailty of greatness. It was the poet's sorrow for the poet, who had almost been to him what the elder brother is to the younger. Both now, and in later years, his affection for one who was become to him a glorified saint, showed itself in deep and genuine expression, through the affectations which crowned the "herse" of Astrophel and Philisides. He was persuaded that Sidney's death had been a grave blow to literature and learning. The _Ruins of Time_, and still more the _Tears of the Muses_, are full of lamentations over returning barbarism and ignorance, and the slight account made by those in power of the gifts and the arts of the writer, the poet, and the dramatist. Under what was popularly thought the crabbed and parsimonious administration of Burghley, and with the churlishness of the Puritans, whom he was supposed to foster, it seemed as if the poetry of the time was passing away in chill discouragement. The effect is described in lines which, as we now naturally suppose, and Dryden also thought, can refer to no one but Shakespere. But it seems doubtful whether all this could have been said of Shakespere in 1590. It seems more likely that this also is an extravagant compliment to Philip Sidney, and his masking performances. He was lamented elsewhere under the poetical name of _Willy_. If it refers to him, it was probably written before his death, though not published till after it; for the lines imply, not that he is literally dead, but that he is in retirement. The expression that he is "dead of late," is explained in four lines below, as "choosing to sit in idle cell," and is one of Spenser's common figures for inactivity or sorrow.[107:1]