Silence augmenteth grief, writing increaseth rage,
staled are my thoughts, which loved and lost the wonder of our age:
yet quickened now with fire, though dead with frost ere now,
enraged I write I know not what; dead, quick, I know not how.

Hard-hearted minds relent and rigour's tears abound,
and envy strangely rues his end, in whom no fault she found.
Knowledge her light hath lost; valour hath slain her knight.
Sidney is dead; dead is my friend; dead is the world's delight.

Place, pensive, wails his fall whose presence was her pride;
Time crieth out, "My ebb is come; his life was my spring tide."
Fame mourns in that she lost the ground of her reports;
each living wight laments his lack, and all in sundry sorts.

He was (woe worth that word!) to each well-thinking mind
a spotless friend, a matchless man, whose virtue ever shined,
declaring in his thoughts, his life, and that he write,
highest conceits, longest foresights, and deepest works of wit.

He, only like himself, was second unto none,
whose death (though life) we rue, and wrong, and all in vain do moan.
Their loss, not him, wail they, that fill the world with cries,
death slew not him, but he made death his ladder to the skies.

Now sink of sorrow I, who live, the more the wrong!
Who wishing death, whom death denies, whose thread is all too long;
who tied to wretched life, who looks for no relief,
must spend my ever dying days in never ending grief.

Heart's ease and only I, like parallels, run on,
whose equal length keep equal breadth, and never meet in one;
yet for not wronging him, my thoughts, my sorrow's cell,
shall not run out, though leak they will, for liking him so well.

Farewell to you, my hopes, my wonted waking dreams,
farewell, sometimes enjoyed joy; eclipsed are thy beams.
Farewell, self-pleasing thoughts, which quietness brings forth;
and farewell, friendship's sacred league, uniting minds of worth.

And farewell, merry heart, the gift of guileless minds,
and all sports which for life's restore variety assigns;
let all that sweet is void; in me no mirth may dwell.
Philip, the cause of all this woe, my life's content, farewell!

Now rhyme, the son of rage, which art no kin to skill,
and endless grief, which deads my life, yet knows not how to kill,
go, seek that hapless tomb, which if ye hap to find,
salute the stones, that keep the limbs, that held so good a mind.

      -- Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke (1554-1628), writing on the death from a war wound of his close friend since childhood, Sir Philip Sidney, the most admired man of his time

Another poem written after the death of Sydney was by Henry Constable (1562-1613):

On Sir Philip Sidney

Give pardon, blessed soul, to my bold cries,
if they, importune, interrupt thy song,
which now with joyful notes thou sing'st among
the angel-choristers of heavenly skies.
Give pardon eke, sweet soul, to my slow eyes,
that since I saw thee now it is so long,
and yet the tears that unto thee belong
to thee as yet they did not sacrifice.
I did not know that thou wert dead before;
I did not feel the grief I did sustain;
the greater stroke astonisheth the more;
astonishment takes from us sense of pain.
I stood amazed when others' tears begun,
and now begin to weep when they have done.