In case you missed AJ's comment on Day 1. Caelica is a series of poems written between three friends, Fluke Greville, Phillip Sydney, and Edward Dyer. The poems are sequenced sonnets in response to each other's poems. The main theme throughout Caelica is soul-struggle. Sydney writes to a mistress Stella while Greville dedicates his poems to the sky (Caelica). For fullest understanding we should read these poems in their sonnet sequences, but since this is the first sonnet of the series, we should be good. When the narrator speak of "her" below he is personifying the sky/heavens.
"Caelica - Sonnet 1" by Fulke, 1st Baron Brooke Greville
Love, the delight of all well-thinking minds,
Delight, the fruit of virtue dearly loved,
Virtue, the highest good that reason finds,
Reason, the fire wherein men's thoughts be proved,
Are from the world by nature's power bereft,
And in one creature for her glory left.
Beauty her cover is, the eye's true pleasure;
In honour's fame she lives, the ear's sweet music;
Excess of wonder grows from her true measure;
Her worth is passion's wound and passion's physic;
From her true heart clear springs of wisdom flow,
Which, imaged in her words and deeds, men know.
Time fain would stay that she might never leave her,
Place doth rejoice that she must needs contain her,
Death craves of heaven that she may not bereave her,
The heavens know their own and do maintain her.
Delight, Love, Reason, Virtue, let it be
To set all women light but only she.
bereave/bereft- deprive/deprived
fain- (adj) pleased; (adv) with pleasure
"set light" to something- to burn it down.
resource for info and poem here.
Delight, the fruit of virtue dearly loved,
Virtue, the highest good that reason finds,
Reason, the fire wherein men's thoughts be proved,
Are from the world by nature's power bereft,
And in one creature for her glory left.
Beauty her cover is, the eye's true pleasure;
In honour's fame she lives, the ear's sweet music;
Excess of wonder grows from her true measure;
Her worth is passion's wound and passion's physic;
From her true heart clear springs of wisdom flow,
Which, imaged in her words and deeds, men know.
Time fain would stay that she might never leave her,
Place doth rejoice that she must needs contain her,
Death craves of heaven that she may not bereave her,
The heavens know their own and do maintain her.
Delight, Love, Reason, Virtue, let it be
To set all women light but only she.
bereave/bereft- deprive/deprived
fain- (adj) pleased; (adv) with pleasure
"set light" to something- to burn it down.
resource for info and poem here.
