The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia
The wound did first, and now the cure must rise.
CLAIUS
Why, gentle grief, thou’rt witness of my love;
Then always sigh my plaints, until you move.
STREPHON
O no, there’s too much rigor in such laws,
They bind a man to speak against his cause.
Suppose I move, this is my recompense;
Joy must succeed, and I am banish’d hence.
CLAIUS
Then must I die unpitied, no help’s found,
Since you, my spokesman, do conceal my wound.
STREPHON
O no, let not that make us to despair:
She knows we love her, but she knows she’s fair.
When they ended, Musidorus (in whose memory their courtesy to him, had
engraven a beholdingness) forgot not to approve what they had said.
But the audience had little time to determine whether they deserved
what the Prince thought them worthy of, when Corydon, who longed to
hear the debate between him and Menalcas, for Kalodulus’s daughter,
ended, clapping him on the shoulder, thus said:
CORYDON
Fond beardless boy! now shall the chastisement
(Fit for thy rash youth’s unweigh’d attempt)
Fall heavy on thee; but you may relent,
I’ll not be cruel if you do repent.
{675}
O no, you will not, you’ll be always blind,
That graceless smile betrays thy scornful mind.
Sing then, and show these goodly dotes in thee,
With which thy brainless youth can equal me.
MENALCAS
Grey-bearded frenzy, what canst thou allege,
To shun my blows, but thy age’s privilege?
Thy tongue may safely snarl, while his offence
Is still protected by that reverence.
The dotes, old dotard, I can bring to prove
Myself deserves that choice, are only love.
A priceless treasure, not to be express’d,
A guest too great for thy cough-breeding breast.
CORYDON
Young man, thou speak’st as if thy brains were wood;
Who can determine of that inward good?
I say, I love, and will Menalcas grieve
That all the world should Corydon believe?
But, that’s not it, these flames will soon decay,
If they be not maintain’d some other way.
A thousand sheep I have, whose snow-white fleece,
Do add a lustre to these parts of Greece:
On whom as many lambs do wait hard by,
That wear their dams white curled livery.
O! what a joy will’t be to her I love;
Each morn, and even, to see her sheep remove
From field to fold, while she may freely say,
That lamb is fat, that lamb I’ll eat to-day?
MENALCAS
Blind fortune, I’ll confess, hath given you more:
Yet I am richer, my content’s my store.
A thousand sheep thou hast, ’tis very like,
But thy diseases want Arithmetic.
Nature between our years a marriage made,
We bloom together, and at once may fade.
But your old age is gone too far before,
Time beats you on, and you’ll return no more.
CORYDON
Hasty young man, do not despise the end
To which yourself, as to a centre, bend.
What, if I want your body’s active toys,
My settled mind a greater good enjoys.
{676}
MENALCAS
Old man, thou speak’st, as if thy brains were wood;
Who can determine of that inward good?
Think’st thou, will that sweet beauty take delight
To hear thee cough a proverb in the night?
O no, there are some other joys in bed,
She must partake whom you desire to wed.
Corydon, inwardly out of countenance to hear his own words bite so
sore upon him, would have shrunk away, but hoping he had found a judge
whom the cause concerned stood a while to attend what Basilius would
have said. But the King put it over to Musidorus, who (glad to find an
occasion to pleasure Menalcas, his first master in the practice of a
shepherd’s life) thus ended it.
“Corydon,” said he, “could I as well lop away some of your over-grown
years, to make your match with Kalodulus’s daughter equal, as I can
add to Menalcas’s state, I would, for a time, suspend my judgment: for
readily I know not whether of you two deserves best: but in the one,
my power seconds my will; as in the other, my will over-goes my power.
Kalodulus’s daughter I therefore adjudge to Menalcas, and I will make
him worthy of her, the rather, that I know his rash youth would
impatiently bear a repulse, where your experience (when it reflects
upon itself), with more discretion may consider she was but a woman.”
Glad was Menalcas to speed so well: nor was Corydon displeased,
because the Prince, as he conceived, had entertained a good opinion of
his wisdom. Thus, when they ended, Pyrocles, who marked Agelastus’s
silent pensiveness, desired to hear him disburden his mind of the
thoughts that brought him to so deep a study: thinking that Agelastus
stood fixed, with the eye of his mind cast upon the beauty of some
fair mistress: but he, who thought of nothing less, thus answered his
expectation.
AGELASTUS
Nor fate, nor fortune, whose enforcing power,
Man still complains upon his state to lower,
Do work these changes: man himself’s the cause;
They be but wheels that keep their mover’s laws:
Yet alway, when he sees his fault too late,
He turns it over upon chance, or fate.
Each man is born a king, his passions be
The practice of his sovereignty:
Who, though they still their sovereign’s good pretend,
Conspire his ruin for their private end.
The love of skin-thick beauty draws his eye
To yield to love, his reason’s majesty.
{677}
His fear throws bugbears in his way; his state
Is still infested by revengeful hate.
His idle grief, for what he might prevent,
Or might not, doth usurp his government.
Thus he, whom God ordain’d a king to be,
Obeys his subjects, and is never free.
Besides, whose state’s so firm, into whose way
The world flings not his joy’s injurious stay?
The surges of the deep, whose joys devour
The merchant’s far-fetch’d hopes, the skies that pour
A second deluge on the ploughman’s corn,
When now his fields are ready to be shorn:
The soldiers long remote, the doubtful chance
Of bloody war, the new-found ordinance;
The city-horns, the court’s brave flattery,
Do force content to dwell with poverty.
Then looking round upon the princes, as if by their survey he were
again enabled to speak, he thus said:
Honour, thou spongy idol of man’s mind,
That soak’st content away, thou hast confin’d.
Ambitious man, and not his destiny,
Within the bounds of form and ceremony.
Oh! happy life of shepherds, whose content
Rests in a soul that’s free and innocent;
They stay their lodging, and remove their roof,
Not for their own, but for their flock’s behoof.
While some (to fill the blanks of their mean story)
Do travel in their cares, to gain vain-glory,
They never leave the plains, unless, sometime,
To look about them, they the mountains climb:
But dwell not there; for ev’n this change doth show
What choicer sweets they do enjoy below:
Here the rough winds do buzz about their ears,
The rocky steepness adds unto their fears:
Here they are ready to be torn asunder,
By malice’s hateful blasts, and envy’s thunder:
From hence they may descend; but, greatness, stay,
If you come down, it must be th’ other way:
For ’tis a bliss, on which your honour shares,
That though you would, you cannot leave your cares.
When Agelastus ended, the company might see a man who seemed to be
misfortune’s herald, with a rope about his neck, make towards the
Queen of Corinth, and cast himself at her feet. They, thinking it had
been some shepherdish invention, expected awhile the conceit of it:
but approaching, after a time, nearer to him, they might discern it
was Tenarus the usurper of Corinth, {678} who, hearing of the Queen’s
welfare, and her happy marriage to Amphialus (finding in his own
practice for the crown the Corinthians aptness to embrace change, and
considering the powerfulness of his enemies) had come thither, in the
basest form of humbleness to set a belief upon his submission. Him the
Queen (because he was a suitor on her marriage-day) pardoned, and
restored to his possessions, forfeited by his treason to the crown;
only she caused his liberty to be restrained until her going to
Corinth, whither, after she had taken leave of Basilius, and the rest
of the royal company, she took her journey; making Amphialus, within a
year after her departure, a happy father of a much-promising son, whom
they named Heleamphialus. Euarchus also, soon after, with his son
Pyrocles and Philoclea, and his nephew Musidorus, together with Pamela
(who was desirous both to accompany her sister, and to see her mother
of Thessaly) parted from Mantinea; leaving Basilius and Gynecia, when
they had accompanied them to the frontiers of Arcadia, to the happy
quiet of their after-life.
Tu longe sequere & vestigia semper adoro,
Sidnei----
Statius.
FINIS.
ENDNOTES
INTRODUCTION NOTES
[i01]
The French prose says simply that King Arthur was at Carlisle: the
poem takes twenty verses to tell how “When Titan with his lusty heat
had made his court for twenty days in Aries, and all with divers hues
had apparelled the fields and branches … in this time the worthy
conqueror, Arthur, who had the flower of all the chivalry of this
world pertaining to his crown, so passing were his knightes in renown,
was at Carlisle, etc.” Then the prose records that the king went one
morning early into the woods to hunt. This the verse expands into ten
lines describing the hunt. In another place the French says, “Et quant
il fut entre en la bataille il fist sonner ses busines tant que tout
en retentissoit.” This the Scots turns into,
“Up goith the trumpetis, and the claryownis,
Hornys, bugillis blawing furth thar sownis,
That al the cuntre resownit hath about;
Than Arthuris folk var in dispar and dout,
That hard the noys, and saw the multitud,
Of fresch folk; thai cam as thai war wod.”
The Black Knight says, “Seigneurs, vous estes tous amys du roy. Or y
perra comment vous le ferez.” This is the sole foundation for
thirty-one lines in the Scots poem, including a response from his
followers that is not in the prose. The Scot uses his material freely,
translating faithfully when a mere pedestrian course was sufficient,
letting himself go when his imagination was aroused. He is more vivid
and circumstantial in narrative, fuller and more sensuous in
description. Take the following; French, “Et fut a leur venue le
chevalier noir mis a terre; Et aussi les six compaignons qui toute
jour avoyent este pres de luy;” Scots,
“The blak knycht is born on to the ground,
His horse hyme fallith, that fellith dethis wound.
The vi falowis, that falowith hyme al day,
Sich was the press, that to the erth go thay.”
A good deal of this expansion is obviously occasioned by the demands
of metre and rhyme.
[i02]
Mr H. R. Plomer, in an interesting paper contributed to the _Library_,
vol. i. (New Series), pp. 195-205, shows that this was a pirated
edition; and perhaps the same is the case with the Dublin edition of
1739, mentioned below.
[i03]
See Wood’s “Athen. Oxon.,” fol. p. 226.
[i04]
See his “Life,” written by Sir Fulke Greville, Kt. Lord Brook. Printed
Ann. 1652, 8vo, p. 5.
[i05]
Wood, _ut supra_.
[i06]
See his “Life,” _ut supra_, p. 8.
[i07]
See Wood, p. 227.
[i08]
_Annal. Camdeni, sub. Ann._ 1581.
[i09]
_Ibid. Ann._ 1582.
[i10]
Published 1590 (_Ibid._ i. 324).
[i11]
First printed, 1591.
[i12]
First printed, 1595.
[i13]
See Wood, _ut supra_.
[i14]
See his “Life,” _ut supra_, p. 142 _et seq._
[i15]
Sir Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.
[i16]
See his “Life,” _ut supra_, p. 165.
[i17]
Camd. Brit. in Kent.
[i18]
See Wood, _ut supra_.
[i19]
See his “Life,” prefixed to the last edition folio.
[i20]
Viz. 16th October 1586.