This maid, thus made for joys—O Pan, bemoan her,
that without love she spends her years of love.48
So fair a field would well become an owner,
and if enchantment can a hard heart move,
teach me what circle may acquaint her sprite
affection’s charms in my behalf to prove.
The circle is my round-about-her sight.
The power I will invoke dwells in her eyes.
My charm should be, she haunt me day and night.
Dorus:
Far other case, ô muse, my sorrow tries,
bent to such one in whom, myself must say,
nothing can mend one point that in her lies.
What circle then in so rare force bears sway
whose spirit all spirits can foil, raise, damn or save?
No charm holds her, but well possess she may.
Possess she does, and makes my soul her slave—
my eyes the bands, my thoughts the fatal knot.
No thralls like those that inward bondage have.
Thyrsis:49
Kala, at length conclude my lingering lot.
Disdain me not, although I be not fair.
Who is an heir of many hundred sheep
does beauties keep, which never sun can burn,
nor storms do turn. Fairness serves oft to wealth,
yet all my health I place in your good will,
which if you will (ô do!) bestow on me,
such as you see, such still you shall me find—
constant and kind. My sheep your food shall breed,
their wool your weed. I will you music yield
in flowery field, and as the day begins
with twenty gins we will the small birds take
and pastimes make, as nature things has made.
But when in shade we meet of mirtle boughs,
then love allows our pleasures to enrich
the thought of which does pass all wordly pelf.
Dorus:
Lady, yourself (whom neither name I dare)50
(and titles are but spots to such a worth),
hear plaints come forth from dungeon of my mind.
The noblest kind rejects not other’s woes.
I have no shows of wealth; my wealth is you.
My beauty’s hue—your beams; my health—your deeds.
My mind for weeds your virtue’s livery wears;
my food is tears, my tunes wamenting51 yield.
Despair my field; the flowers?—spirits’ wares.
My day?—new cares. My gins?—my daily sight
in which do light small birds of thoughts o’er thrown.
My pastimes? None; time passes on my fall.
Nature made all—but me? Of dolors made.
I find no shade but where my sun does burn,
no place to turn without it fries,
nor help by life or death—who living, dies.
Thyrsis:
But if my Kala thus my suit denies,52
which so much reason bears,
let crows pick out my eyes which too much saw.
If she still hate love’s law,
my earthly mold doth melt in watery tears.
Dorus:
My earthly mold doth melt in watery tears,
and they again resolve
to air of sighs. Sighs to the heart’s fire turn,
which doth 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,