Sir Philip Sidney, A poem on true love (Sonnet 54, from his sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella)

It is argued here that the true lover is quiet and reserved, and fears to speak his love.

Astrophil and Stella, composed in the 1580s, has been called the first "real" sonnet sequence in the English language. (Roche 2000:661.)

"The two quartos of Astrophel and Stella, published in 1591 for Thomas Newman, started the late Elizabethan sonnet craze. Although Astrophel and Stella was not the first Petrarchan sonnet sequence in English, it was obviously the most influential. Between 1591 and 1609, the year in which Shakespeare's sonnets were published, about forty sonnet sequences were published, so various in form that no single definition of a 'sonnet sequence' is quite adequate." (Davis 2011:79.)

In explanation of lines 2 and 3, some Elizabethan men would wear roses, ribbons, and locks of their mistress' hair, as a sign of their devotion to her.

"Is there not here resident about London a crew of terrible hacksters in the habit of gentlemen, well apparelled, and yet some wear boots for want of stockings, with a lock worn at their left ear for their mistress' favour?" -- Greene, in The Defence of Cony-Catching, 1592.

Transcript:

Because I breathe not love to every one,
Nor do not use set colours for to wear,
Nor nourish special locks of vowed hair,
Nor give each speech a full point of a groan,

The courtly nymphs, acquainted with the moan
Of them which in their lips Love’s standard bear:
What, he! (say they of me): now I dare swear
He cannot love; no, no, let him alone.

And think so still, so Stella know my mind.
Profess indeed I do not Cupid’s art;
But you, fair maids, at length this true shall find,
That his right badge is but worn in the heart:

Dumb swans, not chattering pies, do lovers prove;
They love indeed who quake to say they love.