Loving in Truth, and Fain in Verse My Love to Show
by Sir Philip Sidney

English poet, courtier, patron of poets and scholars. One of the great literary figures of Elizabethan England, his heroic prose romance, the Arcadia (1580, revised 1584) was the most important work of prose fiction in sixteenth-century England. He wrote the first great Elizabethan sonnet cycles, Astrophil and Stella (1582), a sequence of one hundred and eight sonnets and eleven songs which explore the mind of the lover. His Defense of Poesie (1589) was the finest work of Elizabethan literary criticism. His successful experiments and technique influenced many other Renaissance poets like Spenser, Campion, Drayton and Jonson.

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Loving in Truth, and Fain in Verse My Love to Show
by Sir Philip Sidney

Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That She, dear She, might take some pleasure of my pain,
- Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain -
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe,
Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain,
Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburnt brain.
But words came halting forth, wanting Invention's stay;
Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame Study's blows;
And others' feet still seemed but strangers in my way.
Thus, great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes,
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite -
"Fool!" said my Muse to me "look in thy heart, and write!"

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Loving in Truth, and Fain in Verse My Love to Show by Sir Philip Sidney