Leave Me, O Love is a sonnet by the English poet and courtier Sir Philip Sidney. A courtier is a person often present at the court of a king. Sidney is best known for the lengthy sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella (1582), and for his prose work Defence of Poesie (1580?) and the romance Arcadia (1580). Sidney also wrote a number of individual sonnets, which are admired as important poetic works in their own right. “Leave Me, O Love” is sonnet no. 32 in a collection entitled Certain Sonnets, which appeared as part of the printed edition of Arcadia beginning in 1598. These poems were Sidney’s own arrangement of miscellaneous pieces, written most likely between 1577 and 1581. The actual date of composition for this sonnet is unknown.
Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust, And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things! Grow rich in that which never taketh rust: Whatever fades, but fading pleasure brings. Draw in thy beams, and humble all thy might To that sweet yoke where lasting freedoms be; Which breaks the clouds and opens forth the light That doth both shine and give us sight to see. O take fast hold! let that light be thy guide In this small course which birth draws out to death, And think how evil becometh him to slide Who seeketh Heaven, and comes of heavenly breath. Then farewell, world! Thy uttermost I see: Eternal Love, maintain thy life in me!
Sidney uses a style of verse convention that was popular in the late 1500’s, which is the lyric that renounces or bids farewell to love. In this sonnet, the speaker contrasts the temporary nature of earthly love, which ultimately only becomes dust, with the eternal, divine love of God, which makes death a transformation to be welcomed. But in solemnly facing death, there is also a recognition of the transient joys of life and love.
For more information on Sidney, see Sidney, Sir Philip. See also English literature (Elizabethan poetry) (Elizabethan fiction).
