Text of the Day

A Brief Introduction

On a daily basis (or as often as I return to my web page), as a form of meditation and study, I like to visit a little-known and relatively inaccessible poem from the English Renaissance. The idea is to offer the poem and a brief commentary to a readership who might not otherwise have access to them. The commentary is by no means exhaustive and it can be idiosyncratic, but that I believe is the most attractive feature the Text of the Day. For the moment, I have decided to concentrate on sonnets from the 1590s. They offer ideal scope for quotidian meditation.

April 22, 1996

Commentary and Glossary Notes

Sonnet XXVI

Thomas Lodge

I'll teach thee, lovely Phillis, what love is.
It is a vision seeming such as thou,
That flies as fast as it assaults mine eyes;
It is affection that doth reason miss;
It is a shape of pleasure like to you,
Which meets the eye, and seen on sudden dies;
It is a double grief, a spark of pleasure
Begot by vain desire. And this is love
Whom in our youth we count our chiefest treasure,
In age for want of power we do reprove.
Yea, such a power is love, whose loss is pain,
and having got him we repent our gain.
(1593)