Astrophel (Edmund Spenser)

Astrophel: A Pastorall Elegy upon the Death of the Most Noble and Valorous Knight, Sir Philip Sidney is a poem by the English poet Edmund Spenser.

It includes other poems besides Spenser's: two elegies, "The Mourning Muse of Thestylis" and "A Pastorall Aeglogue Vpon the Death of Sir Philip Sidney Knight", which are attributed to "L.B.

It is assumed to be one of the latest formal elegies on Sidney, composed some time between 1591 (Complaints) and late 1595 (Colin Clout), but nothing in Spenser’s Astrophel indicates where it was written.

However, in his letter to the Countess of Pembroke which prefaces "Ruines of Time" in Complaints, he speaks of the deaths of Sidney and his two uncles, saying that since his arrival in England his friends have upbraided him "for that I have not shewed any thankful remembrance towards him or any of them; but suffer their names to sleep in silence and forgetfulness".

It has also been suggested that the poem is mediocre and lacking the simplicity belonging to the expression of true feeling because Spenser was sincerely mourning Sidney's death.