Sonnet 88
Now that of absence the most yrksome night,With darkest shade doth overcome the daie:Since Stella’s eyes wont to give mee my daie,Leaving my Hemisphere leaves mee in night,Each day seemes long, and longs for long staied night:The night as tedious, wooes th’approch of day:Tyr’d with the dustie toyles of busie day,Languisht with horrors of the silent night,Suffering the evils both of daie and night,While no night is more darke than is my day,Nor no day hath lesse quiet then my night:With such bad mixture of my night and daie,That living thus in blackest Winter night,I feele the flames of hottest Sommers daie.
About this text
Sonnet 88 is in the public domain. This text is taken from Sir P.S.: His Astrophel and Stella Wherein the excellence of sweete poesie is concluded, Project Gutenberg ebook #56375; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Philip Sidney, Sonnet 88, in Astrophel and Stella (1591), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #56375, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sidney-astrophel/sonnet-88.html, id L04844.
Form and metre
Sonnet 88 is 14 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 57% of the lines: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%). 93% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.1 syllables.
See other poems in heroic couplets, other poems in iambic pentameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 ABBAACCAACABAB nightA · daieB · daieB · nightA · nightA · dayC · dayC · nightA · nightA · dayC · nightA · daieB · nightA · daieB
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Now that of absence the most yrksome night, | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| With darkest shade doth overcome the daie: | 10 | ·/˘··/˘··· |
| Since Stella’s eyes wont to give mee my daie, | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| Leaving my Hemisphere leaves mee in night, | 10 | /˘·/˘····· |
| Each day seemes long, and longs for long staied night: | 11 | ········/˘· |
| The night as tedious, wooes th’approch of day: | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Tyr’d with the dustie toyles of busie day, | 10 | ·········· |
| Languisht with horrors of the silent night, | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| Suffering the evils both of daie and night, | 10 | /˘·/˘····· |
| While no night is more darke than is my day, | 10 | ·········· |
| Nor no day hath lesse quiet then my night: | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| With such bad mixture of my night and daie, | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| That living thus in blackest Winter night, | 10 | ·/˘··/˘/˘· |
| I feele the flames of hottest Sommers daie. | 11 | ······/˘/˘· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.