to ashes burn.
Thus does my life within itself dissolve.
Thyrsis.
Thus doth my life within itself dissolve,
that I grow like the beast
which bears the bit a weaker force doth guide—
yet patience must abide:
Such weight it hath, which once is full possessed.
Dorus:
Such weight it hath, which once is full possessed,
that I become a vision,
which hath in others held his only being
and lives in fancy, seeing.
O wretchèd state of man in self division!
Thyrsis:
O wretched state of man in self division.
O well thou sayest! A feeling declaration
thy tongue hath made of Cupid’s deep incision.
But now hoarse voice doth fail this occupation,
and others long to tell their love’s condition.
Of singing thou hast got the reputation.
Dorus did so well in answering Thyrsis that everyone desired to hear him sing something alone. Seeing therefore a lute lying under the princess Pamela’s feet and glad to have such an errand to approach her, he came, but came with a dismayed grace, for all his blood stirred between fear and desire. And playing upon the lute with such sweetness that everybody wondered to see such skill in a shepherd, in a sorrowing voice he sang these elegiac verses:53
Dorus:
Fortune, Nature, Love, long have contended about me
which should most miseries cast on a worm that I am.
Fortune thus gan say, “Misery and misfortune is all one.
And of misfortune only Fortune has the gift.
With strong foes on land, on seas with contrary tempests
still do I cross this wretch, whatso he takes in hand.”
“Tush, tush,” said Nature. “This is all but a trifle. A man’s self
gives haps or mishaps, even as he orders his heart.
But I so frame his humor, in a mold of choler adusted,54
that the delights of life shall be to him dolorous.”
Love smiled and thus said, “Want joined to desire is unhappy,
but if he55 nought do desire, what can Heraclitus ail?
None but I works by desire. By desire have I kindled in his soul
infernal agonies unto a beauty divine
where you, poor Nature, left all your due glory. To Fortune
her56 virtue is sovereign—Fortune a vassal of hers.”
Nature, abashed, went back. Fortune blushed, yet she replied thus:
“And even in that love shall I reserve him a spite.”57
Thus, thus (alas!), woeful by Nature, unhappy by Fortune,
but most wretchèd I am, now Love awakes my desire.
When Dorus had sung this, having had all the while a free beholding of the fair Pamela (who could well have well spared such honor, but defended the assault he gave unto her face by bringing a fair stain of shamefastness58 to it), he let fall his arms and remained fastened in his thoughts, as if Pamela had grafted him there to grow in continual imagination. But Zelmane watched him and fearing he should forget himself too much, she took the lute out of his hand and sang these Sapphics,59 speaking (as it were) to her own hope, while laying fast hold of Philoclea’s face with her eyes:
Zelmane:
If my eyes can speak to do hearty errand,
or my eyes’ language she60 do hap to judge of,
so that eyes’ message be of her receivèd,
hope, we61 do live yet.
But if eyes fail then when I most do need them,
or if eyes’ language be not unto her known,
so the eyes’ message does return rejected,
hope, we do both die.
Yet, dying and dead, do we sing her honor.
So become our tombs monuments of her praise.
So becomes our loss the triumph of her gain:
Hers be the glory.
If the senseless spheres do yet hold a music;
if the swan’s sweet voice be not heard but at death;
if the mute timber, when it has lost its life,
yieldeth a lute’s tune,
are then human lives privileged so meanly
as that hateful death can abridge them of power
with the vow of truth to record to all worlds
that we are her spoils?
Thus not ending, ends the due praise of her praise.
Fleshly vale62 consumes, but a soul has its life,
which is held in love. Love it is that has joined
life to this our soul.
But if eyes can speak to hearty errand,
or my eyes’ language she does hap to judge of
so that eyes’ message be of her received—
Hope, we do yet live.
Great was the pleasure of Basilius. And Gynecia’s would have been greater, except she found too well that the song was intended for her daughter. As for Philoclea, she was sweetly ravished.
Then Dorus (desiring in a secret manner to speak of their cases, as perchance the parties intended might take some light of it), making low reverence to Zelmane, began this provoking song in hexameter verse. Zelmane soon found where his words were directed, both in tune and verse, and answered as follows:
Dorus. Zelmane.63
Dorus:
Lady64
