With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies! How silently, and with how wan a face! What, may it be that e'en in heavenly place That busy archer his sharp arrows tries! Sure, if that long-with-love-acquainted eyes Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case, I read it in thy looks; thy languish'd grace, To me, that feel the like, thy state descries. Then, e'en of fellowship, O Moon, tell me, Is constant love deem'd there but want of wit? Are beauties there as proud as here they be? Do they above love to be loved, and yet Those lovers scorn whom that love doth possess? Do they call virtue, there, ungratefulness? (SIR PHILIP SIDNEY: _Astrophel and Stella_, xxxi. ab. 1580.) Sidney's favorite form for the sonnet sestet was that shown in these specimens (_cdcdee_), a form that suggests the influence of the Surrey or English sonnet rather than the Italian. The first of the sonnets is of course exceptional in being written in alexandrines, but is among the finest in the sequence. See also Sidney's sonnet of the English type, p. 291, below. The _Astrophel and Stella_ (containing 110 sonnets) is the earliest of the great sonnet-sequences or sonnet-cycles of English poetry, those of Spenser, Shakspere, Rossetti, and Mrs. Browning being later representatives. In the Elizabethan age the fashion of writing sonnets, and sonnet-sequences in particular, was at its height, especially in the last decade of the century (1590-1600). On this subject, see the Introduction to Professor Schelling's _Elizabethan Lyrics_, in the Athenæum Press Series, and Mr. Sidney Lee's _Life of Shakspere_. Other noteworthy sonnet-sequences besides those of Sidney, Spenser, and Shakspere were Constable's _Diana_, Daniel's _Delia_, Lodge's _Phyllis_, Watson's _Tears of Fancy_, Barnes's _Parthenophil_, Giles Fletcher's _Lycia_, and Drayton's _Idea_,--all published in the years 1592-1594. A now forgotten poet by the name of Lok produced more than four hundred sonnets, proving himself an Elizabethan rival to Wordsworth. I know that all beneath the moon decays, And what by mortals in this world is brought In time's great periods shall return to naught; That fairest states have fatal nights and days. I know how all the Muse's heavenly lays, With toil of spirit which are so dearly bought, As idle sounds, of few or none are sought; And that naught lighter is than airy praise. I know frail beauty like the purple flower, To which one morn oft birth and death affords; That love a jarring is of minds' accords, Where sense and will invassall reason's power. Know what I list, this all can not me move, But that, O me! I both must write and love. (WILLIAM DRUMMOND of Hawthornden: _Sense of the Fragility of All Things_, etc. 1616.)