Sir Philip Sidney. "O grammar-rules, O now your virtues show." Sonnet 63 from "Astrophil and Stella."

Sir Philip Sidney

Astrophel and Stella

Sonnet LXIII

O grammar-rules, O now your virtues show;
    So children still read you with awful eyes,
    As my young dove may, in your precepts wise,
    Her grant to me by her own virtue know;
For late, with heart most high, with eyes most low,
    I craved the thing which ever she denies;
    She, lightning Love displaying Venus' skies,
    Lest once should not be heard, twice said, No, No!
Sing then, my muse, now Io Pæan sing;
    Heav'ns envy not at my high triumphing,
    But grammar's force with sweet success confirm;
For grammar says,—oh this, dear Stella, weigh,—
    For grammar says,—to grammar who says nay?—
    That in one speech two negatives affirm!

Source:
Poetry of the English Renaissance 1509-1660.
J. William Hebel and Hoyt H. Hudson, Eds.
New York: F. S. Crofts & Co., 1941. 114.

to Works of Sir Philip Sidney