The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia
That she whose look alone might make me blessed,
Did smile on me, and then away she leaped.
DORUS
Once, O sweet once, I saw with dread oppressed
Her whom I dread, so that with prostrate lying
Her length, the earth in love’s chief clothing dressed,
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I saw that riches fall, and fell a crying:
“Let not dead earth enjoy so dear a cover,
But deck therewith my soul for your sake dying:
Lay all your fear upon your fearful lover:
Shine eyes on me that both our lives be guarded;
So I your sight, you shall yourselves recover.”
I cry’d, and was with open eyes rewarded:
But straight they fled summon’d by cruel honour,
Honour, the cause desert is not regarded.
THYRSIS
This maid, thus made for joys, O Pan! bemoan her,
That without love she spends her years of love:
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, O 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 sprite all sprites can foil, raise, damn, or save:
No charm holds her, but well possess she may,
Possess she doth, and makes my soul her slave,
My eyes the bands, my thoughts the fatal knot.
No thrall like them that inward bondage have.
THYRSIS
Kala, at length conclude my ling’ring lot:
Disdain me not, although I be not fair,
Who is an heir of many hundred sheep,
Doth 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, O 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 flow’ry field; and as the day begins
With twenty gins we will the small birds take,
And pastimes make, as nature things hath made.
But when in shade we meet of myrtle boughs,
Then love allows our pleasures to enrich,
The thought of which doth pass all worldly pelf.
DORUS
Lady yourself whom neither name I dare,
And titles are but spots to such a worth,
Here plaints come forth from dungeon of my mind,
The noblest kind rejects not others’ woes.
I have no shows of wealth: my wealth is you,
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My beauties hue your beams, my health your deeds;
My mind for weeds your virtue’s livery wears.
My food is tears, my tunes lamenting yield,
Despair my field, the flowers spirit’s wars:
My day new cares, my gins my daily sight,
In which do light small birds of thoughts o’erthrown:
My pastimes none: time passeth on my fall:
Nature made all, but me of dolours made,
I find no shade, but where my sun doth burn:
No place to turn; without, within it fries:
Nor help by life or death, who living dies.
THYRSIS
But if my Kala thus my suit denies,
Which so much reason bears:
Let crows pick out mine eyes, which too much saw.
If she still hate love’s law,
My earthly mould doth melt in wat’ry tears.
DORUS
My earthly mould doth melt in wat’ry tears,
And they again resolve
To air of sighs, sighs to the heart fire turn,
Which doth to ashes burn.
Thus doth 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 patient must abide.
Such weight it hath, which once is full possess’d.
DORUS
Such weight it hath, which once is full possess’d,
That I become a vision,
Which hath in others held his only being,
And lives in fancy’s seeing,
O wretched state of man in self-division!
THYRSIS
O wretched state of man in self-division!
O well thou say’st! 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 loves’ condition:
Of singing thou hast got the reputation.
DORUS
Of singing thou hast got the reputation,
Good Thyrsis mine, I yield to thy ability;
My heart doth seek another estimation.
But ah, my Muse, I would thou had’st facility
To work my Goddess so by thy invention,
On me to cast those eyes where shine nobility:
Seen and unknown; heard, but without attention.
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, glad to have such an errand to {103} approach
her, he came, but came with a dismayed grace, all his blood stirred
betwixt fear and desire, and playing upon it with such sweetness, as
everybody wondered to see such skill in a shepherd, he sung unto it
with a sorrowing voice, these elegiac verses:
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, Fortune hath only the gift
With strong foes on land, on sea with contrary tempests,
Still do I cross this wretch, what so he taketh in hand.”
“Tush, tush,” said Nature, “this is all but a trifle, a man’s self
Gives haps or mishaps, even as he ordereth his heart.
But so his humour I frame, in a mould of choler adusted,
That the delights of life shall be to him dolorous.”
Love smiled, and thus said: “Want join’d to desire is unhappy:
But if he nought do desire, what can Heraclitus ail?
None but I work by desire: by desire have I kindled in his soul
Infernal agonies into a beauty divine:
Where thou poor nature left’st all thy due glory, to Fortune
Her virtue’s sovereign, Fortune a vassal of hers.”
Nature abash’d went back: Fortune blush’d: yet she replied thus:
“And even in that love shall I reserve him a spite.”
Thus, thus, alas! woeful by Nature, unhappy by Fortune,
But most wretched I am, now Love awakes my desire.
Dorus when he had sung this, having had all the while a free beholding
of the fair Pamela (who could well have spared such honour; and
defended the assault he gave unto her face with bringing a fair stain
of shamefacedness unto it) let fall his arms, and remained so fastened
in his thoughts as if Pamela had grafted him there to grow in
continual imagination. But Zelmane espying it, and fearing he should
too much forget himself, she came to him, and took out of his hand the
lute, and laying fast hold of Philoclea’s face with her eyes, she sung
these sapphics, speaking as it were to her own hope:
If mine eyes can speak to do hearty errand,
Or mine eyes’ language she do hap to judge of,
So that eyes’ message be of her received,
Hope we do live yet.
But if eyes fail then, when I most do need them,
Or if eyes’ language be not unto her known,
So that eyes’ message do return rejected,
Hope we do both die.
Yet dying, and dead, do we sing her honour;
So becomes our tombs monuments of our praise;
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So becomes our loss the triumph of her gain;
Hers be the glory.
If the spheres senseless do yet hold a music,
If the swan’s sweet voice be not heard, but as death,
If the mute timber when it hath the life lost
Yieldeth a lute’s tune.
Are then human lives privileg’d so meanly,
As that hateful death can abridge them of power
With the vow of truth to record to all worlds
That we be her spoils?
Thus not ending, ends the due praise of her praise:
Fleshly veil consumes; but a soul hath his life,
Which is held in love; love it is, that hath join’d
Life to this our soul.
But if eyes can speak to hearty errand,
Or mine eyes’ language she doth hap to judge of,
So that eyes’ message be of her received
Hope we do live yet.
Great was the pleasure of Basilius, and greater would have been
Gynecia’s but that she found too well it was intended to her daughter.
As for Philoclea, she was sweetly ravished withal. When 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 unto her.
Whereunto she soon finding whether his words were directed, in like
tune and verse, answered as followeth:
DORUS ZELMANE
DORUS
Lady reserved by the heavens to do pastor’s company honour,
Joining your sweet voice to the rural muse of a desert,
Here you fully do find the strange operation of love,
How to the woods love runs as well as rides to the palace,
Neither he bears reverence to a prince, nor pity to a beggar,
But, like a point in midst of a circle, is still of a nearness,
All to a lesson he draws; neither hills nor caves can avoid him.
ZELMANE
Worthy shepherd by my song to myself all favour is happ’ned,
That to the sacred Muse my annoys somewhat be revealed,
Sacred Muse, who in one contains what nine do in all them.
But O happy be you, which safe from fiery reflection
Of Phoebus’ violence in shade of sweet Cyparissus,
Or pleasant myrtle, may teach the unfortunate Echo
In these woods to resound the renowned name of goddess.
Happy be you that may to the saint, your only Idea,
(Although simply attir’d) your manly affection utter.
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Happy be those mishaps which justly proportion holding,
Give right sound to the ears, and enter aright to the judgment:
But wretched be the souls, which veil’d in a contrary subject,
How much more we do love, so the less our loves be believed.
What skill salveth a sore of wrong infirmity judged?
What can justice avail to a man that tells not his own case?
You though fears do abash, in you still possible hopes be:
Nature against we do seem to rebel, seem fools in a vain suit.
But so unheard, condemn’d, kept thence we do seek to abide in,
Self-lost in wand’ring, banished that place we do come from,
What mean is there alas, we can hope our loss to recover?
What place is there left, we may hope our woes to recomfort?
Unto the heav’ns? our wings be too short: earth thinks us a burden,
Air? we do still with sighs increase: to the fire? we do want none,
And yet his outward heat our tears would quench, but an inward
Fire no liquor can cool: Neptune’s realm would not avail us.
Happy shepherd, with thanks to the Gods, still think to be thankful,
That to thy advancement their wisdoms have thee abased.
DORUS
Unto the gods with a thankful heart all thanks I do render,
That to my advancement their wisdoms have me abased.
But yet, alas! O but yet alas! our haps be but hard haps,
Which must frame contempt to the fittest purchase of honour.
Well may a pastor plain, but alas his plaints be not esteem’d:
Silly shepherd’s poor pipe, when his harsh sound testifies anguish,
Into the fair looking on, pastime, not passion, enters.
And to the woods or brooks, who do make such dreary recital?
What be the pangs they bear, and whence those pangs be derived,
Pleas’d to receive that name by rebounding answer of Echo,
May hope thereby to ease their inward horrible anguish,
When trees dance to the pipe, and swift streams stay by the music,
Or when an Echo begins unmov’d to sing them a love-song;
Say then, what vantage do we get by the trade of a pastor?
(Since no estates be so base, but love vouchsafeth his arrow,
Since no refuge doth serve from wounds we do carry about us,