If the
magician
wished
him not to fight any more, why should he give him the sword back?
him not to fight any more, why should he give him the sword back?
Stories from the Italian Poets
where her coquetry and
her self-sufficiency--her love of being loved, with the power to hate the
lover? The enchantress was now taught what the passion was, in all its
despair as well as delight. She cried aloud. She cared not for the
presence of the messengers. "Oh, go not, Rinaldo," she cried; "go not, or
take me with thee. My heart is torn to pieces. Take me, or turn and kill
me. Stop, at least, and be cruel to me here. If thou hast the heart to
fly me, it will not be hard to thee to stay and be unkind. "
Even the messengers were moved at this, or seemed to be moved. Ubaldo
told the fugitive that it would be heroical in him to wait and hear what
the lady had to say, with gentleness and firmness.
His conquest over himself would then be complete.
Rinaldo stopped, and Armida came up breathless and in tears--lovelier
than ever. She looked earnestly at him at first, without a word. He gave
her but a glance, and looked aside.
As a fine singer, before he lets loose his tongue in the lofty utterance
of his emotion, prepares the minds of his hearers with some sweet
prelude, exquisitely modulating in a lower tone,--so the enchantress,
whose anguish had not deprived her of all sense of her art, breathed a
few sighs to dispose the soul of her idol to listen, and then said: "I
do not beg thee to hear me as one that loves me. We both loved once; but
that is over. I beg thee to hear, even though as one that loves me not.
It will cost thy disdain nothing to grant me that. Perhaps thou hast
discovered a pleasure in hating me. Do so. I come not to deprive thee of
it. If it seem just to thee, just let it be. I too once hated. I hated
the Christians--hated even thyself. I thought it right to do so: I was
bred up to think it. I pursued thee to do thee mischief; I overtook thee;
I bore thee away; and worse than all--for now perhaps thou loathest me
for it--I loved thee. I loved thee, for the first time that I loved any
one; nay, I made thee love me in turn; and, alas, I gave myself into
thine arms. It was wrong. I was foolish; I was wicked. I grant that I
have deserved thou shouldst think ill of me, that thou shouldst punish
me, and quit me, and hate to have any remembrance of this place which I
had filled with delights. Go; pass over the seas; make war against my
friends and my country; destroy us all, and the religion we believe in.
Alas! _'we'_ do I say? The religion is mine no longer--O thou, the cruel
idol of my soul. Oh, let me go with thee, if it be but as thy servant,
thy slave. Let the conqueror take with him his captive; let her be
mocked; let her be pointed at; only let her be with thee. I will cut off
these tresses, which no longer please thee: I will clothe myself in other
attire, and go with thee into the battle. I have courage and strength
enough to bear thy lance, to lead thy spare-horse, to be, above all,
thy shield-bearer--thy shield. Nothing shall touch thee but through
me--through this bosom, Rinaldo. Perhaps mischance may spare thee for
its sake. Not a word? not a little word? Do I dare to boast of what thou
hadst once a kind word for, though now thou wilt neither look upon me nor
speak to me? "
She could say no more: her words were suffocated by a torrent of tears.
But she sought to take his hand, to arrest him by his mantle--in vain.
He could scarcely, it is true, restrain his tears: but he did. He looked
sorrowful, but composed; and at length he said: "Armida, would I could do
as thou wishest; but I cannot. I would relieve thee instantly of all this
tumult of emotion. No hate is there in him that must quit thee; no such
disdain as thou fanciest; nothing but the melancholy and impetuous sense
of his duty. Thou hast erred, it is true--erred both in love and hate;
but have I not erred with thee? and can I find excuse which is not found
for thyself? Dear and honoured ever wilt thou be with Rinaldo, whether in
joy or sorrow. Count me, if it please thee, thy champion still, as far as
my country and my faith permit; but here, in this spot, must be buried
all else--buried, not for my sake only, but for that of thy beauty, thy
worthiness, thy royal blood. Consent to disparage thyself no longer.
Peace be with thee. I go where I have no permission to take thee with me.
Be happy; be wise. " While Rinaldo was speaking in this manner, Armida
changed colour; her bosom heaved; her eyes took a new kind of fire; scorn
rose upon her lip. When he finished, she looked at him with a bitterness
that rejected every word he had said; and then she exclaimed: "Thou hast
no such blood in thine own veins as thou canst fear to degrade. Thy
boasted descent is a fiction: base, and brutish, and insensible was thy
stock. What being of gentle blood could quit a love like mine without
even a tear--a sigh? What but the mockery of a man could call me his, and
yet leave me? vouchsafe me his pardon, as if I had offended him? excuse
my guilt and my tenderness; he, the sage of virtue, and me, the wretch! O
God! and these are the men that take upon them to slaughter the innocent,
and dictate faiths to the world! Go, hard heart, with such peace as thou
leavest in this bosom. Begone; take thine injustice from my sight for
ever. My spirit will follow thee, not as a help, but as a retribution.
I shall die first, and thou wilt die speedily: thou wilt perish in the
battle. Thou wilt lie expiring among the dead and bleeding, and wilt call
on Armida in thy last moments, and I shall hear it--yes, I shall hear it;
I shall look for that. "
Down fell Armida on the ground, senseless; and Rinaldo stood over her,
weeping at last. Open thine eyes, poor wretch, and see him. Alas, the
heavens deny thee the consolation! What will he do? Will he leave thee
lying there betwixt dead and alive? Or will he go--pitying thee, but
still going? He goes; he is gone; he is in the bark, and the wind is in
the sail; and he looks back--ever back; but still goes: the shore begins
to be out of sight.
Armida woke, and was alone. She raved again, but it was for vengeance.
In a few days she was with the Egyptian army, a queen at the head of her
vassals, going against the Christians at Jerusalem.
Part the Fifth.
THE DISENCHANTMENT OF THE FOREST, AND THE TAKING OF JERUSALEM, &c.
Rinaldo arrived without loss of time in the Christian camp before
Jerusalem. Every body rejoiced to see the right hand of the army. Godfrey
gladly pardoned him; the hermit Peter blessed him; he himself retired to
beg the forgiveness and favour of Heaven; and then he went straight to
the Enchanted Forest.
It was a beautiful morning, and the forest, instead of presenting its
usual terrors, appeared to him singularly tranquil and pleasing. On
entering it he heard, not dreadful thunder-claps, but harmonies made
up of all sorts of gentle and lovely sounds--brooks, whispering winds,
nightingales, organs, harps, human voices. He went slowly and cautiously,
and soon came to a beautiful river which encircled the heart of the wood.
A bridge of gold carried him over. He had no sooner crossed it, than the
river higher up suddenly swelled and rushed like a torrent, sweeping
the bridge away. The harmony meanwhile had become silent. Admiring, but
nothing daunted, the hero went on.
Every thing as he advanced appeared to start into fresh beauty. His steps
produced lilies and roses; here leaped up a fountain, and there came
falling a cascade; the wood itself seemed to grow young as with sudden
spring; and he again heard the music and the human voices, though he
could see no one.
Passing through the trees, he came into a glade in the heart of the wood,
in the centre of which he beheld a myrtle-tree, the largest and most
beautiful ever seen: it was taller than a cypress or palm, and seemed the
queen of the forest. Looking around him, he observed to his astonishment
an oak suddenly cleave itself open, and out of it there came a nymph. A
hundred other trees did the same, giving birth to as many nymphs. They
were all habited as we see them in theatres; only, instead of bows and
arrows, each held a lute or guitar. Coming towards the hero with joyful
eyes, they formed a circle about him, and danced; and in their dancing
they sang, and bade him welcome to the haunt of their mistress, their
loving mistress, of whom he was the only hope and joy. Looking as they
spoke towards the myrtle, Rinaldo looked also, and beheld, issuing out of
it--Armida.
Armida came sweetly towards him, with a countenance at once grieving and
rejoicing, but expressing above all infinite affection. "And do I indeed
see thee again? " she said; "and wilt thou not fly me a second time? am
I visited to be consoled, or to be treated again as an enemy? is poor
Armida so formidable, that thou must needs close up thine helmet when
thou beholdest her? Thou mightest surely have vouchsafed her once more a
sight of thine eyes. Let us be friends, at least, if we may be nothing
more. Wilt thou not take her hand? "
Rinaldo's answer was, to turn away as from a cheat, to look towards the
myrtle-tree, to draw his sword, and proceed with manifest intentions of
assailing it. She ran before him shrieking, and hugged it round. "Nay,
thou wilt not," she said, "thou wilt not hurt my tree--not cut and slay
what is bound up with the life of Armida? Thy sword must pass first
through her bosom. "
Armida writhed and wailed; Rinaldo nevertheless raised his sword, and it
was coming against the tree, when her shape, like a thing in a dream,
was metamorphosed as quick as lightning. It became a giant, a Briareus,
wielding a hundred swords, and speaking in a voice of thunder. Every
one of the nymphs at the same instant became a Cyclops; tempest and
earthquake ensued, and the air was full of ghastly spectres.
Rinaldo again raised his arm with a more vehement will; he struck, and
at the same instant every horror disappeared. The sky was cloudless; the
forest was neither terrible nor beautiful, but heavy and sombre as of
old--a natural gloomy wood, but no prodigy.
Rinaldo returned to the camp, his aspect that of a conqueror; the silver
wings of his crest, the white eagle, glittering in the sun. The hermit
Peter came forward to greet him; a shout was sent up by the whole camp;
Godfrey gave him high reception; nobody envied him. Workmen, no longer
trembling, were sent to the forest to cut wood for the machines of war;
and the tower was rebuilt, together with battering-rams and balistas, and
catapults, most of them an addition to what they had before. The tower
also was now clothed with bulls-hides, as a security against being set on
fire; and a bridge was added to the tower, from which the besiegers could
at once step on the city-walls.
With these long-desired invigorations of his strength, the commander of
the army lost no time in making a general assault on Jerusalem; for
a dove, supernaturally pursued by a falcon, had brought him letters
intended for the besieged, informing them, that if they could only hold
out four days longer, their Egyptian allies would be at hand. The Pagans
beheld with dismay the resuscitated tower, and all the new engines coming
against them. They fought valiantly; but Rinaldo and Godfrey prevailed.
The former was the first to scale the walls, the latter to plant his
standard from the bridge. The city was entered on all sides, and the
enemy driven, first into Solomon's Temple, and then into the Citadel, or
Tower of David. Before the assault, Godfrey had been vouchsafed a sight
of armies of angels in the air, accompanied by the souls of those who had
fallen before Jerusalem; the latter still fighting, the former rejoicing;
so that there was no longer doubt of triumph; only it still pleased
Heaven that human virtue should be tried.
And now, after farther exploits on both sides, the last day of the war,
and the last hope of the Infidels, arrived at the same time; for the
Egyptian army came up to give battle with the Christians, and to restore
Jerusalem, if possible, to its late owners, now cramped up in one corner
of it--the citadel. The besiegers in their narrow hold raised a shout of
joy at the sight; and Godfrey, leaving them to be detained in it by an
experienced captain, went forth to meet his new opponents. Crowns of
Africa and of Persia were there, and the king of the Indies; and in the
midst of all, in a chariot surrounded by her knights and suitors, was
Armida.
The battle joined, and great was the bravery and the slaughter on both
sides. It seemed at first all glitter and gaiety--its streamers flying,
its arms flashing, drums and trumpets rejoicing, and horses rushing with
their horsemen as to the tournament. Horror looked beautiful in the
spectacle. Out of the midst of the dread itself there issued a delight.
But soon it was a bloody, and a turbulent, and a raging, and a groaning
thing:--pennons down, horses and men rolling over, foes heaped upon one
another, bright armour exchanged for blood and dirt, flesh trampled, and
spirit fatigued. Brave were the Pagans; but how could they stand against
Heaven? Godfrey ordered every thing calmly, like a divine mind; Rinaldo
swept down the fiercest multitudes, like an arm of God. The besieged in
the citadel broke forth, only to let the conquerors in. Jerusalem was won
before the battle was over. King after king fell, and yet the vanquished
did not fly. Rinaldo went every where to hasten the rout; and still had
to fight and slay on. Armida beheld him coming where she sat in the midst
of her knights; he saw her, and blushed a little: she turned as cold as
ice, then as hot as fire. Her anger was doubled by the slaughter of her
friends; and with her woman's hand she sent an arrow out of her bow,
hoping, and yet even then hoping not, to slay or to hurt him. The arrow
fell on him like a toy; and he turned aside, as she thought, in disdain.
Yet he disdained not to smite down her champions. Hope of every kind
deserted her. Resolving to die by herself in some lonely spot, she got
down from her chariot to horse, and fled out of the field. Rinaldo saw
the flight; and though one of the knights that remained to her struck him
such a blow as made him reel in his saddle, he despatched the man with
another like a thunderbolt, and then galloped after the fugitive.
Armida was in the act of putting a shaft to her bosom, in order to die
upon it, when her arm was arrested by a mighty grasp; and turning round,
she beheld with a shriek the beloved face of him who had caused the ruin
of her and hers. She closed her disdainful eyes and fainted away. Rinaldo
supported her; he loosened her girdle; he bathed her bosom and her
eyelids with his tears. Coming at length to herself, still she would
not look at him. She would fain not have been supported by him. She
endeavoured with her weak fingers to undo the strong ones that clasped
her; she wept bitterly, and at length spoke, but still without meeting
his eyes.
"And may I not," she said, "even die? must I be followed and tormented
even in my last moments? What mockery of a wish to save me is this! I
will not be watched; I believe not a syllable of such pity; and I will
not be made a sight of, and a by-word. I ask my life of thee no longer;
I want nothing but death; and death itself I would not receive at such
hands; they would render even that felicity hateful. Leave me. I could
not be hindered long from putting an end to my miseries, whatever
barbarous restraint might be put upon me. There are a thousand ways of
dying; and I will be neither hindered, nor deceived, nor flattered--oh,
never more! "
Weeping she spoke--weeping always, and sobbing, and full of wilful words.
But yet she felt all the time the arm that was round her.
"Armida," said Rinaldo, in a voice full of tenderness, "be calm, and know
me for what I am--no enemy, no conqueror, nothing that intends thee shame
or dishonour; but thy champion, thy restorer--he that will preserve thy
kingdom for thee, and seat thee in house and home. Look at me--look in
these eyes, and see if they speak false. And oh, would to Heaven thou
wouldst indeed be as I am in faith. There isn't a queen in all the East
should equal thee in glory. "
His tears fell on her eyelids as he spoke--scalding tears; and she looked
at him, and her heart re-opened to its lord, all love and worship; and
Armida said, "Behold thy handmaid; dispose of her even as thou wilt. "
And that same day Godfrey of Boulogne was lord of Jerusalem, and paid his
vows on the sepulchre of his Master.
[Footnote 1:
"Chiama gli abitator' de l'ombre eterne
Il rauco suon de la tartarea tromba.
Treman le spaziose atre caverne,
E l'aer cieco a quel romor rimbomba.
Nè sì stridendo mai da le superne
Regioni del cielo il folgor piomba:
Nè sì scossa già mai trema la terra,
Quando i vapori in sen gravida serra. "
Canto iv. st. 3.
The trump of Tartarus, with iron roar,
Called to the dwellers the black regions under:
Hell through its caverns trembled to the core,
And the blind air rebellowed to the thunder:
Never yet fiery bolt more fiercely tore
The crashing firmament, like rocks, asunder;
Nor with so huge a shudder earth's foundations
Shook to their mighty heart, lifting the nations.
The tone of this stanza (suggested otherwise by Vida) was caught from a
fine one in Politian, the passage in which about the Nile I ought to have
called to mind at page 168.
"Con tal romor, qualor l'aer discorda,
Di Giove il foco d'alta nube piomba:
Con tal tumulto, onde la gente assorda,
Da l'alte cataratte il Nil rimbomba:
Con tal orror del Latin sangue ingorda
Sonò Megera la tartarea tromba. "
_Fragment on the Jousting of Giuliano de' Medici_.
Such is the noise, when through his cloudy floor
The bolt of Jove falls on the pale world under;
So shakes the land, where Nile with deafening roar
Plunges his clattering cataracts in thunder;
Horribly so, through Latium's realm of yore,
The trump of Tartarus blew ghastly wonder. ]
[Footnote 2:
"La bella Armida, di sua forma altiera,
E de' doni del sesso e de l'etate,
L' impresa prende: e in su la prima sera
Parte, e tiene sol vie chiuse e celate:
E 'n treccia e 'n gonna femminile spera
Vincer popoli invitti e schiere armate. "
Canto iv. st. 27. ]
[Footnote 3:
"That sweet grove
Of Daphne by Orontes. "
_Parad. Lost_, b. iv.
It was famous for the most luxurious worship of antiquity. Vide Gibbon,
vol. iii. p. 198. ]
[Footnote 4: I omit a point about "fires" of love, and "ices" of the
heart; and I will here observe, once for all, that I omit many such in
these versions of Tasso, for the reason given in the Preface. ]
[Footnote 5: In the original, an impetuous gust of wind carries away the
sword of Tancred; a circumstance which I mention because Collins admired
it (see his Ode on the Superstitions of the Highlands). I confess I
cannot do so. It seems to me quite superfluous; and when the reader
finds the sword conveniently lying for the hero outside the wood, as he
returns, the effect is childish and pantomimic.
If the magician wished
him not to fight any more, why should he give him the sword back? And if
it was meant as a present to him from Clorinda, what gave her the
power to make the present? Tasso retained both the particulars in the
_Gerusalemme Conquistata_. ]
[Footnote 6:
"Giace l'alta Cartago: appena i segni
De l'alte sue ruine il lido serba.
Muoiono le città: muoiono i regni:
Copre i fasti e le pompe arena ed erba:
E l'uom d'esser mortal par che si sdegni.
Oh nostra mente cupida e superba! "
Canto xv. st. 20.
Great Carthage is laid low. Scarcely can eye
Trace where she stood with all her mighty crowd
For cities die; kingdoms and nations die;
A little sand and grass is all their shroud;
Yet mortal man disdains mortality!
O mind of ours, inordinate and proud!
Very fine is this stanza of Tasso; and yet, like some of the finest
writing of Gray, it is scarcely more than a cento. The commentators call
it a "beautiful imitation" of a passage in Sannazzaro; and it is; but the
passage in Sannazzaro is also beautiful. It contains not only the "Giace
Cartago," and the "appena i segni," &c. , but the contrast of the pride
with the mortality of man, and, above all, the "dying" of the cities,
which is the finest thing in the stanza of its imitator.
"Qua devictae Carthaginis arces
Procubuere, jacentque infausto in littore turres
Eversae; quantum ille metus, quantum illa laborum
Urbs dedit insultans Latio et Laurentibus arvis!
Nunc passim vix reliquias, vix nomina servans,
Obruitur propriis non agnoscenda ruinis.
Et querimur genus infelix, humana labare
Membra aevo, cum regna palam moriantur et urbes. "
_De Partu Virginis_, lib. ii.
The commentators trace the conclusion of this passage to Dante, where he
says that it is no wonder families perish, when cities themselves "have
their terminations" (termin hanuo): but though there is a like germ of
thought in Dante, the mournful flower of it, the word "death," is not
there. It was evidently suggested by a passage (also pointed out by the
commentators) in the consolatory letter of Sulpicius to Cicero, on the
death of his daughter Tullia;--"Heu nos homunculi indignamur, si quis
nostrum interiit, aut occisus est, quorum vita brevior esse debet, cum
uno loco tot oppidorum cadavera projecta jaceant. " (Alas! we poor human
creatures are indignant if any one of us dies or is slain, frail as are
the materials of which we are constituted; and yet we can see, lying
together in one place, the dead bodies of I know not how many cities! )
The music of Tasso's line was indebted to one in Petrarch's _Trionfo del
Tempo, v. 112
_" Passan le signorie, passano i regni;"
and the fine concluding verse, "Oh nostra mente," to another perhaps
in his _Trionfo della Divinità, v. 61_, not without a recollection of
Lucretius, lib. ii. v. 14:
"O miseras hominum menteis! o pectora caeca! "]
[Footnote 7: A fountain which caused laughter that killed people is in
Pomponius Mela's account of the Fortunate Islands; and was the origin of
that of Boiardo; as I ought to have noticed in the place. ]
[Footnote 8: All this description of the females bathing is in the
highest taste of the voluptuous; particularly the latter part:
"Qual mattutina stella esce de l'onde
Rugiadosa e stillante: o come fuore
Spuntò nascendo già da le feconde
Spume de l'ocean la Dea d'Amore:
Tale apparve costei: tal le sue bionde
Chiome stillavan cristallino umore.
Poi girò gli occhi, e pur allor s'infinse
Que' duo vedere, e in se tutta si strinse:
E 'l crin the 'n cima al capo avea raccolto
In un sol nodo, immantinente sciolse;
Che lunghissimo in giù cadendo, e folto,
D'un aureo manto i molli avori involse.
Oh che vago spettacolo è lor tolto!
Ma mon men vago fu chi loro il tolse.
Così da l'acque e da capelli ascosa,
A lor si volse, lieta e vergognosa.
Rideva insieme, e insieme ella arrossia;
Ed era nel rossor più bello il riso,
E nel riso il rossor, the le copria
Insino al mento il delicato viso. "
Canto xv. st. 60.
Spenser, among the other obligations which it delighted him to owe to
this part of Tasso's poem, has translated these last twelve lines:
"With that the other likewise up arose,
And her fair locks, which formerly were bound
Up in one knot, she low adown did loose,
Which, flowing long and thick, her cloth'd around,
And th' ivory in golden mantle gown'd:
So that fair spectacle from him was reft;
Yet that which reft it, no less fair was found.
So hid in locks and waves from looker's theft,
Nought but her lovely face she for his looking left.
Withal she laughèd, and she blush'd withal;
That blushing to her laughter gave more grace,
And laughter to her blushing. "
Fairy Queen, book ii. canto 12, St. 67.
Tasso's translator, Fairfax, worthy both of his original and of Spenser,
has had the latter before him in his version of the passage, not without
a charming addition of his own at the close of the first stanza:
"And her fair locks, that in a knot were tied
High on her crown, she 'gan at large unfold;
Which falling long and thick, and spreading wide,
The ivory soft and white mantled in gold:
Thus her fair skin the dame would clothe and hide;
And that which hid it, no less fair was hold.
Thus clad in waves and locks, her eyes divine
From them ashamed would she turn and twine.
Withal she smilèd, and she blush'd withal;
Her blush her smiling, smiles her blushing graced. "]
[Footnote 9:
"E quel che 'l bello e 'l caro accresce a l'opre,
L'arte, the tutto fa, nulla si scopre.
Stimi (si misto il culto è col negletto)
Sol naturali e gli ornamenti e i siti.
Di natura arte par, the per diletto
L'imitatrice sua scherzando imiti. "
The idea of Nature imitating Art, and playfully imitating her, is in
Ovid; but that of a mixture of cultivation and wildness is, as far as I
am aware, Tasso's own. It gives him the honour of having been the first
to suggest the picturesque principle of modern gardening; as I ought
to have remembered, when assigning it to Spenser in a late publication
(_Imagination and Fancy, p. 109_). I should have noticed also, in the
same work, the obligations of Spenser to the Italian poet for the passage
before quoted about the nymph in the water. ]
[Footnote 10:
"Par che la dura quercia e 'l casto alloro,
E tutta la frondosa ampia famiglia,
Par the la terra e l'acqua e formi e spiri
Dolcissimi d'amor sensi e sospiri. "
St. 16.
Fairfax in this passage is very graceful and happy (in the first part of
his stanza he is speaking of a bird that sings with a human voice--which
I have omitted):
"She ceased: and as approving all she spoke,
The choir of birds their heavenly tunes renew;
The turtles sigh'd, and sighs with kisses broke;
The fowls to shades unseen by pairs withdrew;
It seem'd the laurel chaste and stubborn oak,
And all the gentle trees on earth that grew,
It seem'd the land, the sea, and heaven above,
All breath'd out fancy sweet, and sigh'd out love. "]
[Footnote 11:
"Ecco tra fronde e fronde il guardo avante
Penetra, e vede, o pargli di vedere,
Vede per certo," &c.
St. 17. ]
[Footnote 12: The line about the peacock,
"Spiega la pompa de l'occhiute piume,"
Opens wide the pomp of his eyed plumes,
was such a favourite with Tasso, that he has repeated it from the
_Aminta_, and (I think) in some other place, but I cannot call it to
mind. ]
[Footnote 13:
"Teneri sdegni, e placide e tranquille
Repulse, e cari vezzi, e liete paci,
Sorrisi, e parolette, e dolci stille
Di pianto, e sospir' tronchi, e molli baci. " St. 5
This is the cestus in Homer, which Venus lends to Juno for the purpose of
enchanting Jupiter
Greek: N kai apo staethesphin elusato keston himanta
Poikilon' entha de ohi thelktaeria panta tetukto'
Enth' heni men philotaes, en d' himeras, en d' oaristus,
Parphasis, hae t' eklepse noon puka per phroneonton. ]
Iliad, lib. xiv. 214.
She said; and from her balmy bosom loosed
The girdle that contained all temptinguess--
Love, and desire, and sweet and secret talk
Lavish, which robs the wisest of their wits. ]
APPENDIX
* * * * *
No. I.
THE DEATH OF AGRICAN.
BOIARDO.
Orlando ed Agricane un' altra fiata
Ripreso insieme avean crudel battaglia,
La più terribil mai non fu mirata,
L'arme l'un l'altro a pezzo a pezzo taglia.
Vede Agrican sua gente sbarattata,
Nè le può dar aiuto, che le vaglia.
Però che Orlando tanto stretto il tiene,
Che star con seco a fronte gli conviene.
Nel suo segreto fè questo pensiero,
Trar fuor di schiera quel Conte gagliardo;
E poi Che ucciso l'abbia in su 'l sentiero,
Tornare a la battaglia senza tardo;
Però che a lui par facile e leggiero
Cacciar soletto quel popol codardo;
Chè tutti insieme, e 'l suo Re Galafrone,
Non li stimava quanto un vil bottone.
Con tal proposto si pone a fuggire,
Forte correndo sopra la pianura;
Il Conte nulla pensa a quel fallire,
Anzi crede che 'l faccia per paura.
Senz' altro dubbio se 'l pone a seguire,
E già son giunti ad una selva scura
Appunto in mezzo a quella selva piana,
Era un bel prato intorno a una fontana.
Fermossi ivi Agricane a quella fonte,
E smontò de l'arcion per riposare,
Ma non si tolse l'elmo da la fronte,
Nè piastra, o scudo si volse levare;
E poco dimorò, che giunse 'l Conte,
E come il vide a la fonte aspettare,
Dissegli: Cavalier, tu sei fuggito,
E sì forte mostravi e tanto ardito!
Come tanta vergogna puoi soffrire,
A dar le spalle ad un sol cavaliero!
Forse credesti la morte fuggire,
Or vedi che fallito hai il pensiero;
Chi morir può onorato dee morire;
Che spesse volte avviene e di leggiero,
Che, per durar in questa vita trista,
Morte e vergogna ad un tratto s'acquista.
Agrican prima rimontò in arcione,
Poi con voce soave rispondia
Tu sei per certo il più franco Barone,
Ch'io mai trovassi ne la vita mia,
E però del tuo scampo fia cagione
La tua prodezza e quella cortesia,
Che oggi sì grande al campo usato m'hai,
Quando soccorso a mia gente donai.
Però ti voglio la vita lasciare,
Ma non tornasti più per darmi inciampo.
Questo la fuga mi fè simulare,
Nè v'ebbi altro partito a darti scampo.
Se pur ti piace meco battagliare,
Morto ne rimarrai su questo campo;
Ma siami testimonio il cielo e 'l sole,
Che darti morte mi dispiace e duole.
Il Conte gli rispose molto umano,
Perchè avea preso già di lui pietate;
Quanto sei, disse, più franco e soprano,
Più di te mi rincresce in veritate,
Che sarai morto, e non sei Cristiano,
Ed anderai tra l'anime dannate;
Ma se vuoi il corpo e l'anima salvare,
Piglia battesmo, e lascierotti andare.
Disse Agricane, e riguardollo in viso:
Se tu sei Cristiano, Orlando sei.
Chi mi facesse Re del Paradiso,
Con tal ventura non la cangierei;
Ma sin or ti ricordo e dotti avviso,
Che non mi parli de' fatti de' Dei,
Perchè potresti predicar invano;
Difenda it suo ciascun co 'l brando in mano.
Nè più parole; ma trasse Tranchera,
E verso Orlando con ardir s'affronta.
Or si comincia la battaglia fiera,
Con aspri colpi, di taglio e di ponta;
Ciascun è di prodezza una lumiera,
E sterno insieme, com'il libro conta,
Da mezzo giorno insino a notte scura,
Sempre più franchi a la battaglia dura.
Ma poi che 'l sol avea passato il monte
E cominciossi a far il ciel stellato,
Prima verso del Re parlava it Conte;
Che farem, disse, the 'l giorno n'è andato?
Disse Agricane, con parole pronte:
Ambi ci poseremo in questo prato,
E domattina, come il giorno appare,
Ritorneremo insieme a battagliare.
Così d'accordo il partito si prese;
Lega il destrier ciascun come gli piace,
Poi sopra a l'erba verde si distese:
Come fosse tra loro antica pace,
L'uno a l'altro vicino era e palese.
Orlando presso al fonte isteso giace,
Ed Agricane al bosco più vicino
Stassi colcato, a l'ombra d'un gran pino.
E ragionando insieme tutta via
Di cose degne e condecenti a loro,
Guardava il Conte il ciel, poscia dicia:
Questo the ora veggiamo, è un bel lavoro,
Che fece la divina Monarchia,
La luna d'argento e le stelle d'oro,
E la luce del giorno e 'l sol lucente,
Dio tutto ha fatto per l'umana gente.
Disse Agricane: Io comprendo per certo,
Che to vuoi de la fede ragionare;
Io di nulla scienza son esperto,
Nè mai sendo fanciul, volsi imparare;
E ruppi il capo al maestro mio per merto;
Poi non si potè un altro ritrovare,
Che mi mostrasse libro, nè scrittura,
Tanto ciascun avea di me paura.
E così spesi la mia fanciullezza,
In caccie, in giochi d'arme e in cavalcare;
Nè mi par che convenga a gentilezza,
Star tutto il giorno ne' libri a pensare;
Ma la forza del corpo e la destrezza
Conviensi al cavaliero esercitare;
Dottrina al prete, ed al dottor sta bene;
Io tanto saccio quanto mi conviene.
Rispose Orlando: Io tiro teco a un seguo,
Che l'armi son del'uomo il primo onore;
Ma non già che 'l saper faccia un men degno,
Anzi l'adorna com' un prato il fiore;
Ed è simile a un bove, a un sasso, a un legno,
Che non pensa a l'eterno Creatore;
Nè ben si puo pensar, senza dottrina,
La somma maestade, alta e divina.
Disse Agricane: Egli è gran scortesia
A voler contrastar con avvantaggio.
Io t' ho scoperto la natura mia,
E to conosco, the sei dotto e saggio;
Se più parlassi, io non risponderia;
Piacendoti dormir, dormiti ad aggio;
E se meco parlar hai pur diletto,
D'arme o d' amor a ragionar t' aspetto.
Ora ti prego, che a quel ch' io domando
Risponda il vero, a fè d' uomo pregiato;
Se in se' veramente quell' Orlando,
Che vien tanto nel mondo nominato;
E perchè qui sei giunto, e come, e quando;
E se mai fosti ancora innamorato;
Perche ogni cavalier, ch'è senza amore,
Se in vista è vivo, vivo senza core.
Rispose il Conte: Quell' Orlando sono,
Che uccise Almonte e'l suo fratel Troiano;
Amor m' ha posto tutto in abbandono,
E venir fammi in questo luogo strano.
E perchè teco piu largo ragiono,
Voglio the sappi che 'l mio cor è in mano
De la figliuola del Re Galafrone,
Che ad Albracca dimora nel girone.
Tu fai co 'l padre guerra a gran furore,
Per prender suo paese e sua castella;
Ed io quà son condotto per amore,
E per piacer a quella damisella;
Molte fiate son stato per onore
E per la fede mia sopra la sella;
Or sol per acquistar la bella dama
Faccio battaglia, e d'altro non ho brama.
Quando Agrican ha nel parlare accolto,
Che questo è Orlando, ed Angelica amava,
Fuor di misura si turbò nel volto,
Ma per la notte non lo dimostrava;
Piangeva sospirando come un stolto,
L'anima e 'l petto e 'l spirto gli avvampava,
E tanto gelosia gli batte il core,
Che non è vivo, e di doglia non more.
Poi disse a Orlando: Tu debbi pensare,
Che come il giorno sarà dimostrato,
Debbiamo insieme la battaglia fare,
E l'uno o l'altro rimarrà su 'l prato.
Or d'una cosa ti voglio pregare,
Che, prima che vegnamo e cotal piato,
Quella donzella, che 'l tuo cor disia,
Tu l'abbandoni e lascila per mia.
Io non potria patire, essendo vivo,
Che altri con meco amasse il viso adorno:
O l'uno o l'altro al tutto sarà privo
Del spirto e de la dama al novo giorno;
Altri mai non saprà, che questo rivo
E questo bosco, ch'è quivi d'intorno,
Che l'abbi rifiutata in cotal loco
E in cotal tempo, che sarà sì poco.
Diceva Orlando al Re: Le mie promesse
Tutte ho servate, quante mai ne fei;
Ma se quel che or mi chiedi io promettesse
E s'io il giurassi, io non l'attenderei;
Così poria spiccar mie membra istesse
E levarmi di fronte gli occhi miei,
E viver senza spirto e senza core,
Come lasciar d' Angelica l'amore.
Il Re Agrican, che ardeva oltre misura,
Non puote tal risposta comportare;
Benchè sia 'l mezzo de la notte scura,
Prese Bajardo e su v' ebbe a montare,
Ed orgoglioso, con vista sicura,
Isgrida al Conte, ed ebbel a sfidare,
Dicendo: Cavalier, la dama gaglia
Lasciar convienti, o far meco battaglia.
Era già il Conte in su l' arcion salito,
Perchè, come si mosse il Re possente,
Temendo dal Pagan esser tradito,
Saltò sopra 'l destrier subitamente;
Onde rispose con animo ardito:
Lasciar colei non posso per niente;
E s'io potess, ancora io non vorria;
Avertela convien per altra via.
Come in mar la tempesta a gran fortuna,
Cominciarno l' assalto i cavalieri
Nel verde prato, per la notte bruna,
Con sproni urtarno addosso i buon destrieri;
E si scorgeano al lume de la luna,
Dandosi colpi dispietati e fieri,
Ch' era ciascun difor forte ed ardito
Ma più non dico; il Canto è quì finito.
ARIOSTO.
Seguon gli Scotti ove la guida loro
Per l'alta selva alto disdegno mena,
Poi che lasciato ha l'uno e l'altro Moro,
L'un morto in tutto, e l'altro vivo a pena.
Giacque gran pezzo il giovine Medoro,
Spicciando il sangue da sì larga vena,
Che di sua vita al fin saria venuto,
Se non sopravenia chi gli diè aiuto.
Gli sopravenne a caso una donzella,
Avvolta in pastorale et umil veste,
Ma di real presenzia, e in viso bella,
D'alte maniere e accortamente oneste.
Tanto è ch'io non ne dissi più novella,
Ch'a pena riconoscer la dovreste;
Questa, se non sapete, Angelica era,
Del gran Can del Catai la figlia altiera.
Poi che 'l suo annello Angelica riebbe,
Di the Brunel l'avea tenuta priva,
In tanto fasto, in tanto orgoglio crebbe,
Ch'esser parea di tutto 'l mondo schiva:
Se ne va sola, e non si degnerebbe
Compagno aver qual più famoso viva;
Si sdegna a rimembrar the già suo amante
Abbia Orlando nomato, o Sacripante.
E, sopra ogn'altro error, via più pentita
Era del ben che già a Rinaldo volse.
Troppo parendole essersi avvilita,
Ch'a riguardar sì basso gli occhi volse.
Tant'arroganzia avendo Amor sentita,
Più lungamente comportar non volse.
Dove giacea Medor, si pose al varco,
E l'aspettò, posto lo strale all'arco.
Quando Angelica vide il giovinetto
Languir ferito, assai vicino a morte,
Che del suo Re che giacea senza tetto,
Più che del proprio mal, si dolea forte,
Insolita pietade in mezo al petto
Si sentì entrar per disusate porte,
Che le fe' il duro cor tenero e molle;
E più quando il suo caso egli narrolle.
E rivocando alla memoria l'arte
Ch'in India imparò già chirurgia,
(Chè par che questo studio in quella parte
Nobile e degno e di gran laude sia;
E, senza molto rivoltar di carte,
Che 'l patre a i figli ereditario il dia)
Si dispose operar con succo d'erbe,
Ch'a più matura vita lo riserbe.
E ricordossi che passando avea
Veduta un'erba in una piaggia amena;
Fosse dittamo, o fosse panacea,
O non so qual di tal effetto piena,
Che stagna il sangue, e de la piaga rea
Leva ogni spasmo e perigliosa pena,
La trovò non lontana, e, quella côlta,
Dove lasciato avea Medor, diè volta.
Nel ritornar s'incontra in un pastore,
Ch'a cavallo pel bosco ne veniva
Cercando una iuvenca, che gli fuore
Duo dì di mandra e senza guardia giva.
Seco lo trasse ove perdea il vigore
Medor col sangue che del petto usciva;
E già n'avea di tanto il terren tinto,
Ch'era omai presso a rimanere estinto.
Del palafreno Angelica giù scese,
E scendere il pastor seco fece anche.
Pestò con sassi l'erba, indi la presse,
E succo ne cavò fra le man bianche:
Ne la piaga n'infuse, e ne distese
E pel petto e pel ventre e fin a l'anche;
E fu di tal virtù questo liquore,
Che stagnò il sangue e gli tornò il vigore:
E gli diè forza, che poté salire
Sopra il cavallo the 'l pastor condusse.
Non però volse indi Medor partire
Prima ch'in terra il suo signor non fosse,
E Cloridan col Re fe' sepelire;
E poi dove a lei piacque si ridusse;
Et ella per pietà ne l'umil case
Del cortese pastor seco rimase.
Nè, fin che nol tornasse in sanitade,
Volea partir: così di lui fe' stima:
Tanto sè intenerì de la pietade
Che n'ebbe, come in terra il vide prima.
Poi, vistone i costumi e la beltade,
Roder si sentì il cor d'ascosa lima;
Roder si sentì il core, e a poco a poco
Tutto infiammato d'amoroso fuoco.
Stava il pastore in assai buona e bella
Stanza, nel bosco infra duo monti piatta,
Con la moglie e co i figli; et avea quella
Tutta di nuovo e poco inanzi fatta.
Quivi a Medoro fu per la donzella
La piaga in breve a sanità ritratta;
Ma in minor tempo si sentì maggiore
Piaga di questa avere ella nel core.
Assai più larga piaga e più profonda
Nel cor senti da non veduto strale,
Che da' begli occhi e da la testa bionda
Di Medoro avventè l'arcier c'ha l'ale.
Arder si sente, e sempre il fuoco abonda,
E più cura l'altrui che 'l proprio male.
Di sè non cura; e non è ad altro intenta,
Ch'a risanar chi lei fere e tormenta.
La sua piaga più s'apre e più incrudisce,
Quanto piu l' altra si restringe e salda.
Il giovine si sana: ella languisce
Di nuova febbre, or agghiacciata or calda.
Di giorno in giorno in lui beltà fiorisce:
La mísera si strugge, come falda
Strugger di nieve intempestiva suole,
Ch'in loco aprico abbia scoperta il sole.
Se di disio non vuol morir, bisogna
Che senza indugio ella sè stessa aïti:
E ben le par che, di quel ch' essa agogna,
Non sia tempo aspettar ch' altri la 'nviti.
Dunque, rotto ogni freno di vergogna,
La lingua ebbe non men che gli occhi arditi;
E di quel colpo domandò mercede,
Che, forse non sapendo, esso le diede.
O Conte Orlando, o Re di Circassia,
Vestra inclita virtù, dite, che giova?
Vostro alto onor, dite, in che prezzo sia?
O che merce vostro servir ritruova?
Mostratemi una sola cortesia,
Che mai costei v'usasse, o vecchia o nuova,
Per ricompensa e guidardone e merto
Di quanto avete già per lei sofferto.
Oh, se potessi ritornar mai vivo,
Quanto ti parria duro, o Re Agricane!
Che già mostrò costei sì averti a schivo
Con repulse crudeli et inumane.
O Ferraù, o mille altri ch'io non scrivo,
Ch'avete fatto mille pruove vane
Per questa ingrata, quanto aspro vi fora
S'a costu' in braccio voi la vedesse ora!
Angelica a Medor la prima rôsa
Coglier lasciò, non ancor tocca inante;
Nè persona fu mai si avventurosa,
Ch'in quel giardin potesse por le piante.
Per adombrar, per onestar la cosa,
Si celebrò con cerimonie sante
Il matrimonio, ch'auspice ebbe Amore,
E pronuba la moglie del pastore.
Fêrsi le nozze sotto all'umil tetto
Le più solenni che vi potean farsi;
E più d'un mese poi stero a diletto
I duo tranquilli amanti a ricrearsi.
Più lunge non vedea del giovinetto
La donna, nè di lui potea saziarsi:
Nè, per mai sempre pendegli dal cello,
Il suo disir sentìa di lui satollo.
Se stava all'ombra, o se del tetto usciva,
Avea dì e notte il bel giovine a lato:
Matino e sera or questa or quella riva
Cercando andava, o qualche verde prato:
Nel mezo giorno un antro li copriva,
Forse non men di quel commodo e grato
Ch'ebber, fuggendo l'acque, Enea e Dido,
De' lor secreti testimonio fido.
Fra piacer tanti, ovunque un arbor dritto
Vedesse ombrare o fonte o rivo puro,
V'avea spillo o coltel subito fitto;
Così, se v'era alcun sasso men duro.
Et era fuori in mille luoghi scritto,
E così in casa in altri tanti il muro,
Angelica e Medoro, in varii modi
Legati insieme di diversi nodi.
Poi che le parve aver fatto soggiorno
Quivi più ch'a bastanza, fe' disegno
Di fare in India del Catai ritorno,
E Medor coronar del suo bel regno.
Portava al braccio un cerchio d'oro, adorno
Di ricche gemme, in testimonio e segno
Del ben che 'l Conte Orlando le volea;
E portato gran tempo ve l'avea.
Quel dono già Morgana a Ziliante,
Nel tempo the nel lago ascoso il tenne;
Et esso, poi ch'al padre Monodante
Per opra e per virtù d'Orlando venne,
Lo diede a Orlando: Orlando ch'era amante,
Di porsi al braccio it cerchio d'or sostenne,
Avendo disegnato di donarlo
Alla Regina sua di ch'io vi parlo.
Non per amor del Paladino, quanto
Perch'era ricco e d'artificio egregio,
Caro avuto l'avea la donna tanto
Che più non si può aver cosa di pregio.
Sè lo serbò ne l'Isola del pianto,
Non so già dirvi con the privilegio,
Là dove esposta al marin mostro nuda
Fu da la gente inospitale e cruda.
Quivi non si trovando altra mercede,
Ch'al buon pastore et alla moglie dessi,
Che serviti gli avea con sì gran fede
Dal dì che nel suo albergo si fur messi;
Levò dal braccio il cerchio, e gli lo diede,
E volse per suo amor che lo tenessi;
Indi saliron verso la montagna
Che divide la Francia da la Spagna.
Dentro a Valenza o dentro a Barcellona
Per qualche giorno avean pensato porsi,
Fin che accadesse alcuna nave buona,
Che per Levante apparecchiasse a sciorsi.
Videro il mar scoprir sotto a Girona
Ne lo smontar giù de i montani dorsi;
E, costeggiando a man sinistra il lito,
A Barcellona andâr pel camin trito.
Ma non vi giunser prima ch'un uom pazzo
Giacer trovaro in su l'estreme arene,
Che, come porco, di loto e di guazzo
Tutto era brutto, e volto e petto e schene.
Costui si scagliò lor, come cagnazzo
Ch' assalir forestier subito viene;
E diè for noia e fu per far lor scorno.
* * * * *
The troop then follow'd where their chief had gone,
Pursuing his stern chase among the trees,
And leave the two companions there alone,
One surely dead, the other scarcely less.
Long time Medoro lay without a groan,
Losing his blood in such large quantities,
That life would surely have gone out at last,
Had not a helping hand been coming past.
There came, by chance, a damsel passing there,
Dress'd like a shepherdess in lowly wise,
But of a royal presence, and an air
Noble as handsome, with clear maiden eyes.
'Tis so long since I told you news of her,
Perhaps you know her not in this disguise.
This, you must know then, was Angelica,
Proud daughter of the Khan of great Cathay.
You know the magic ring and her distress?
Well, when she had recover'd this same ring,
It so increas'd her pride and haughtiness,
She seem'd too high for any living thing.
She goes alone, desiring nothing less
Than a companion, even though a king
She even scorns to recollect the flame
Of one Orlando, or his very name.
But, above all, she hates to recollect
That she had taken to Rinaldo so;
She thinks it the last want of self-respect,
Pure degradation, to have look'd so low.
"Such arrogance," said Cupid, "must be check'd. "
The little god betook him with his bow
To where Medoro lay; and, standing by,
Held the shaft ready with a lurking eye.
Now when the princess saw the youth all pale,
And found him grieving with his bitter wound,
Not for what one so young might well bewail,
But that his king should not be laid in ground,--
She felt a something strange and gentle steal
Into her heart by some new way it found,
Which touch'd its hardness, and turn'd all to grace;
And more so, when he told her all his case.
And calling to her mind the little arts
Of healing, which she learnt in India,
(For 'twas a study valued in those parts
Even by those who were in sovereign sway,
And yet so easy too, that, like the heart's,
'Twas more inherited than learnt, they say),
She cast about, with herbs and balmy juices,
To save so fair a life for all its uses.
And thinking of an herb that caught her eye
As she was coming, in a pleasant plain
(Whether 'twas panacea, dittany,
Or some such herb accounted sovereign
For stanching blood quickly and tenderly,
And winning out all spasm and bad pain),
She found it not far off, and gathering some,
Returned with it to save Medoro's bloom.
In coming back she met upon the way
A shepherd, who was riding through the wood
To find a heifer that had gone astray,
And been two days about the solitude.
She took him with her where Medoro lay,
Still feebler than he was with loss of blood;
So much he lost, and drew so hard a breath,
That he was now fast fading to his death.
Angelica got off her horse in haste,
And made the shepherd get as fast from his;
She ground the herbs with stones, and then express'd
With her white hands the balmy milkiness;
Then dropp'd it in the wound, and bath'd his breast,
His stomach, feet, and all that was amiss
And of such virtue was it, that at length
The blood was stopp'd, and he look'd round with strength.
At last he got upon the shepherd's horse,
But would not quit the place till he had seen
Laid in the ground his lord and master's corse;
And Cloridan lay with it, who had been
Smitten so fatally with sweet remorse.
He then obey'd the will of the fair queen;
And she, for very pity of his lot,
Went and stay'd with him at the shepherd's cot.
Nor would she leave him, she esteem'd him so,
Till she had seen him well with her own eye;
So full of pity did her bosom grow,
Since first she saw him faint and like to die.
Seeing his manners now, and beauty too,
She felt her heart yearn somehow inwardly;
She felt her heart yearn somehow, till at last
'Twas all on fire, and burning warm and fast.
The shepherd's home was good enough and neat,
A little shady cottage in a dell
The man had just rebuilt it all complete,
With room to spare, in case more births befell.
There with such knowledge did the lady treat
Her handsome patient, that he soon grew well;
But not before she had, on her own part,
A secret wound much greater in her heart.
Much greater was the wound, and deeper far,
Which the sweet arrow made in her heart's strings;
'Twas from Medoro's lovely eyes and hair;
'Twas from the naked archer with the wings.
She feels it now; she feels, and yet can bear
Another's less than her own sufferings.
She thinks not of herself: she thinks alone
How to cure him by whom she is undone.
The more his wound recovers and gets ease,
Her own grows worse, and widens day by day.
The youth gets well; the lady languishes,
Now warm, now cold, as fitful fevers play.
His beauty heightens, like the flowering trees;
She, miserable creature, melts away
Like the weak snow, which some warm sun has found
Fall'n, out of season, on a rising ground.
And must she speak at last, rather than die?
her self-sufficiency--her love of being loved, with the power to hate the
lover? The enchantress was now taught what the passion was, in all its
despair as well as delight. She cried aloud. She cared not for the
presence of the messengers. "Oh, go not, Rinaldo," she cried; "go not, or
take me with thee. My heart is torn to pieces. Take me, or turn and kill
me. Stop, at least, and be cruel to me here. If thou hast the heart to
fly me, it will not be hard to thee to stay and be unkind. "
Even the messengers were moved at this, or seemed to be moved. Ubaldo
told the fugitive that it would be heroical in him to wait and hear what
the lady had to say, with gentleness and firmness.
His conquest over himself would then be complete.
Rinaldo stopped, and Armida came up breathless and in tears--lovelier
than ever. She looked earnestly at him at first, without a word. He gave
her but a glance, and looked aside.
As a fine singer, before he lets loose his tongue in the lofty utterance
of his emotion, prepares the minds of his hearers with some sweet
prelude, exquisitely modulating in a lower tone,--so the enchantress,
whose anguish had not deprived her of all sense of her art, breathed a
few sighs to dispose the soul of her idol to listen, and then said: "I
do not beg thee to hear me as one that loves me. We both loved once; but
that is over. I beg thee to hear, even though as one that loves me not.
It will cost thy disdain nothing to grant me that. Perhaps thou hast
discovered a pleasure in hating me. Do so. I come not to deprive thee of
it. If it seem just to thee, just let it be. I too once hated. I hated
the Christians--hated even thyself. I thought it right to do so: I was
bred up to think it. I pursued thee to do thee mischief; I overtook thee;
I bore thee away; and worse than all--for now perhaps thou loathest me
for it--I loved thee. I loved thee, for the first time that I loved any
one; nay, I made thee love me in turn; and, alas, I gave myself into
thine arms. It was wrong. I was foolish; I was wicked. I grant that I
have deserved thou shouldst think ill of me, that thou shouldst punish
me, and quit me, and hate to have any remembrance of this place which I
had filled with delights. Go; pass over the seas; make war against my
friends and my country; destroy us all, and the religion we believe in.
Alas! _'we'_ do I say? The religion is mine no longer--O thou, the cruel
idol of my soul. Oh, let me go with thee, if it be but as thy servant,
thy slave. Let the conqueror take with him his captive; let her be
mocked; let her be pointed at; only let her be with thee. I will cut off
these tresses, which no longer please thee: I will clothe myself in other
attire, and go with thee into the battle. I have courage and strength
enough to bear thy lance, to lead thy spare-horse, to be, above all,
thy shield-bearer--thy shield. Nothing shall touch thee but through
me--through this bosom, Rinaldo. Perhaps mischance may spare thee for
its sake. Not a word? not a little word? Do I dare to boast of what thou
hadst once a kind word for, though now thou wilt neither look upon me nor
speak to me? "
She could say no more: her words were suffocated by a torrent of tears.
But she sought to take his hand, to arrest him by his mantle--in vain.
He could scarcely, it is true, restrain his tears: but he did. He looked
sorrowful, but composed; and at length he said: "Armida, would I could do
as thou wishest; but I cannot. I would relieve thee instantly of all this
tumult of emotion. No hate is there in him that must quit thee; no such
disdain as thou fanciest; nothing but the melancholy and impetuous sense
of his duty. Thou hast erred, it is true--erred both in love and hate;
but have I not erred with thee? and can I find excuse which is not found
for thyself? Dear and honoured ever wilt thou be with Rinaldo, whether in
joy or sorrow. Count me, if it please thee, thy champion still, as far as
my country and my faith permit; but here, in this spot, must be buried
all else--buried, not for my sake only, but for that of thy beauty, thy
worthiness, thy royal blood. Consent to disparage thyself no longer.
Peace be with thee. I go where I have no permission to take thee with me.
Be happy; be wise. " While Rinaldo was speaking in this manner, Armida
changed colour; her bosom heaved; her eyes took a new kind of fire; scorn
rose upon her lip. When he finished, she looked at him with a bitterness
that rejected every word he had said; and then she exclaimed: "Thou hast
no such blood in thine own veins as thou canst fear to degrade. Thy
boasted descent is a fiction: base, and brutish, and insensible was thy
stock. What being of gentle blood could quit a love like mine without
even a tear--a sigh? What but the mockery of a man could call me his, and
yet leave me? vouchsafe me his pardon, as if I had offended him? excuse
my guilt and my tenderness; he, the sage of virtue, and me, the wretch! O
God! and these are the men that take upon them to slaughter the innocent,
and dictate faiths to the world! Go, hard heart, with such peace as thou
leavest in this bosom. Begone; take thine injustice from my sight for
ever. My spirit will follow thee, not as a help, but as a retribution.
I shall die first, and thou wilt die speedily: thou wilt perish in the
battle. Thou wilt lie expiring among the dead and bleeding, and wilt call
on Armida in thy last moments, and I shall hear it--yes, I shall hear it;
I shall look for that. "
Down fell Armida on the ground, senseless; and Rinaldo stood over her,
weeping at last. Open thine eyes, poor wretch, and see him. Alas, the
heavens deny thee the consolation! What will he do? Will he leave thee
lying there betwixt dead and alive? Or will he go--pitying thee, but
still going? He goes; he is gone; he is in the bark, and the wind is in
the sail; and he looks back--ever back; but still goes: the shore begins
to be out of sight.
Armida woke, and was alone. She raved again, but it was for vengeance.
In a few days she was with the Egyptian army, a queen at the head of her
vassals, going against the Christians at Jerusalem.
Part the Fifth.
THE DISENCHANTMENT OF THE FOREST, AND THE TAKING OF JERUSALEM, &c.
Rinaldo arrived without loss of time in the Christian camp before
Jerusalem. Every body rejoiced to see the right hand of the army. Godfrey
gladly pardoned him; the hermit Peter blessed him; he himself retired to
beg the forgiveness and favour of Heaven; and then he went straight to
the Enchanted Forest.
It was a beautiful morning, and the forest, instead of presenting its
usual terrors, appeared to him singularly tranquil and pleasing. On
entering it he heard, not dreadful thunder-claps, but harmonies made
up of all sorts of gentle and lovely sounds--brooks, whispering winds,
nightingales, organs, harps, human voices. He went slowly and cautiously,
and soon came to a beautiful river which encircled the heart of the wood.
A bridge of gold carried him over. He had no sooner crossed it, than the
river higher up suddenly swelled and rushed like a torrent, sweeping
the bridge away. The harmony meanwhile had become silent. Admiring, but
nothing daunted, the hero went on.
Every thing as he advanced appeared to start into fresh beauty. His steps
produced lilies and roses; here leaped up a fountain, and there came
falling a cascade; the wood itself seemed to grow young as with sudden
spring; and he again heard the music and the human voices, though he
could see no one.
Passing through the trees, he came into a glade in the heart of the wood,
in the centre of which he beheld a myrtle-tree, the largest and most
beautiful ever seen: it was taller than a cypress or palm, and seemed the
queen of the forest. Looking around him, he observed to his astonishment
an oak suddenly cleave itself open, and out of it there came a nymph. A
hundred other trees did the same, giving birth to as many nymphs. They
were all habited as we see them in theatres; only, instead of bows and
arrows, each held a lute or guitar. Coming towards the hero with joyful
eyes, they formed a circle about him, and danced; and in their dancing
they sang, and bade him welcome to the haunt of their mistress, their
loving mistress, of whom he was the only hope and joy. Looking as they
spoke towards the myrtle, Rinaldo looked also, and beheld, issuing out of
it--Armida.
Armida came sweetly towards him, with a countenance at once grieving and
rejoicing, but expressing above all infinite affection. "And do I indeed
see thee again? " she said; "and wilt thou not fly me a second time? am
I visited to be consoled, or to be treated again as an enemy? is poor
Armida so formidable, that thou must needs close up thine helmet when
thou beholdest her? Thou mightest surely have vouchsafed her once more a
sight of thine eyes. Let us be friends, at least, if we may be nothing
more. Wilt thou not take her hand? "
Rinaldo's answer was, to turn away as from a cheat, to look towards the
myrtle-tree, to draw his sword, and proceed with manifest intentions of
assailing it. She ran before him shrieking, and hugged it round. "Nay,
thou wilt not," she said, "thou wilt not hurt my tree--not cut and slay
what is bound up with the life of Armida? Thy sword must pass first
through her bosom. "
Armida writhed and wailed; Rinaldo nevertheless raised his sword, and it
was coming against the tree, when her shape, like a thing in a dream,
was metamorphosed as quick as lightning. It became a giant, a Briareus,
wielding a hundred swords, and speaking in a voice of thunder. Every
one of the nymphs at the same instant became a Cyclops; tempest and
earthquake ensued, and the air was full of ghastly spectres.
Rinaldo again raised his arm with a more vehement will; he struck, and
at the same instant every horror disappeared. The sky was cloudless; the
forest was neither terrible nor beautiful, but heavy and sombre as of
old--a natural gloomy wood, but no prodigy.
Rinaldo returned to the camp, his aspect that of a conqueror; the silver
wings of his crest, the white eagle, glittering in the sun. The hermit
Peter came forward to greet him; a shout was sent up by the whole camp;
Godfrey gave him high reception; nobody envied him. Workmen, no longer
trembling, were sent to the forest to cut wood for the machines of war;
and the tower was rebuilt, together with battering-rams and balistas, and
catapults, most of them an addition to what they had before. The tower
also was now clothed with bulls-hides, as a security against being set on
fire; and a bridge was added to the tower, from which the besiegers could
at once step on the city-walls.
With these long-desired invigorations of his strength, the commander of
the army lost no time in making a general assault on Jerusalem; for
a dove, supernaturally pursued by a falcon, had brought him letters
intended for the besieged, informing them, that if they could only hold
out four days longer, their Egyptian allies would be at hand. The Pagans
beheld with dismay the resuscitated tower, and all the new engines coming
against them. They fought valiantly; but Rinaldo and Godfrey prevailed.
The former was the first to scale the walls, the latter to plant his
standard from the bridge. The city was entered on all sides, and the
enemy driven, first into Solomon's Temple, and then into the Citadel, or
Tower of David. Before the assault, Godfrey had been vouchsafed a sight
of armies of angels in the air, accompanied by the souls of those who had
fallen before Jerusalem; the latter still fighting, the former rejoicing;
so that there was no longer doubt of triumph; only it still pleased
Heaven that human virtue should be tried.
And now, after farther exploits on both sides, the last day of the war,
and the last hope of the Infidels, arrived at the same time; for the
Egyptian army came up to give battle with the Christians, and to restore
Jerusalem, if possible, to its late owners, now cramped up in one corner
of it--the citadel. The besiegers in their narrow hold raised a shout of
joy at the sight; and Godfrey, leaving them to be detained in it by an
experienced captain, went forth to meet his new opponents. Crowns of
Africa and of Persia were there, and the king of the Indies; and in the
midst of all, in a chariot surrounded by her knights and suitors, was
Armida.
The battle joined, and great was the bravery and the slaughter on both
sides. It seemed at first all glitter and gaiety--its streamers flying,
its arms flashing, drums and trumpets rejoicing, and horses rushing with
their horsemen as to the tournament. Horror looked beautiful in the
spectacle. Out of the midst of the dread itself there issued a delight.
But soon it was a bloody, and a turbulent, and a raging, and a groaning
thing:--pennons down, horses and men rolling over, foes heaped upon one
another, bright armour exchanged for blood and dirt, flesh trampled, and
spirit fatigued. Brave were the Pagans; but how could they stand against
Heaven? Godfrey ordered every thing calmly, like a divine mind; Rinaldo
swept down the fiercest multitudes, like an arm of God. The besieged in
the citadel broke forth, only to let the conquerors in. Jerusalem was won
before the battle was over. King after king fell, and yet the vanquished
did not fly. Rinaldo went every where to hasten the rout; and still had
to fight and slay on. Armida beheld him coming where she sat in the midst
of her knights; he saw her, and blushed a little: she turned as cold as
ice, then as hot as fire. Her anger was doubled by the slaughter of her
friends; and with her woman's hand she sent an arrow out of her bow,
hoping, and yet even then hoping not, to slay or to hurt him. The arrow
fell on him like a toy; and he turned aside, as she thought, in disdain.
Yet he disdained not to smite down her champions. Hope of every kind
deserted her. Resolving to die by herself in some lonely spot, she got
down from her chariot to horse, and fled out of the field. Rinaldo saw
the flight; and though one of the knights that remained to her struck him
such a blow as made him reel in his saddle, he despatched the man with
another like a thunderbolt, and then galloped after the fugitive.
Armida was in the act of putting a shaft to her bosom, in order to die
upon it, when her arm was arrested by a mighty grasp; and turning round,
she beheld with a shriek the beloved face of him who had caused the ruin
of her and hers. She closed her disdainful eyes and fainted away. Rinaldo
supported her; he loosened her girdle; he bathed her bosom and her
eyelids with his tears. Coming at length to herself, still she would
not look at him. She would fain not have been supported by him. She
endeavoured with her weak fingers to undo the strong ones that clasped
her; she wept bitterly, and at length spoke, but still without meeting
his eyes.
"And may I not," she said, "even die? must I be followed and tormented
even in my last moments? What mockery of a wish to save me is this! I
will not be watched; I believe not a syllable of such pity; and I will
not be made a sight of, and a by-word. I ask my life of thee no longer;
I want nothing but death; and death itself I would not receive at such
hands; they would render even that felicity hateful. Leave me. I could
not be hindered long from putting an end to my miseries, whatever
barbarous restraint might be put upon me. There are a thousand ways of
dying; and I will be neither hindered, nor deceived, nor flattered--oh,
never more! "
Weeping she spoke--weeping always, and sobbing, and full of wilful words.
But yet she felt all the time the arm that was round her.
"Armida," said Rinaldo, in a voice full of tenderness, "be calm, and know
me for what I am--no enemy, no conqueror, nothing that intends thee shame
or dishonour; but thy champion, thy restorer--he that will preserve thy
kingdom for thee, and seat thee in house and home. Look at me--look in
these eyes, and see if they speak false. And oh, would to Heaven thou
wouldst indeed be as I am in faith. There isn't a queen in all the East
should equal thee in glory. "
His tears fell on her eyelids as he spoke--scalding tears; and she looked
at him, and her heart re-opened to its lord, all love and worship; and
Armida said, "Behold thy handmaid; dispose of her even as thou wilt. "
And that same day Godfrey of Boulogne was lord of Jerusalem, and paid his
vows on the sepulchre of his Master.
[Footnote 1:
"Chiama gli abitator' de l'ombre eterne
Il rauco suon de la tartarea tromba.
Treman le spaziose atre caverne,
E l'aer cieco a quel romor rimbomba.
Nè sì stridendo mai da le superne
Regioni del cielo il folgor piomba:
Nè sì scossa già mai trema la terra,
Quando i vapori in sen gravida serra. "
Canto iv. st. 3.
The trump of Tartarus, with iron roar,
Called to the dwellers the black regions under:
Hell through its caverns trembled to the core,
And the blind air rebellowed to the thunder:
Never yet fiery bolt more fiercely tore
The crashing firmament, like rocks, asunder;
Nor with so huge a shudder earth's foundations
Shook to their mighty heart, lifting the nations.
The tone of this stanza (suggested otherwise by Vida) was caught from a
fine one in Politian, the passage in which about the Nile I ought to have
called to mind at page 168.
"Con tal romor, qualor l'aer discorda,
Di Giove il foco d'alta nube piomba:
Con tal tumulto, onde la gente assorda,
Da l'alte cataratte il Nil rimbomba:
Con tal orror del Latin sangue ingorda
Sonò Megera la tartarea tromba. "
_Fragment on the Jousting of Giuliano de' Medici_.
Such is the noise, when through his cloudy floor
The bolt of Jove falls on the pale world under;
So shakes the land, where Nile with deafening roar
Plunges his clattering cataracts in thunder;
Horribly so, through Latium's realm of yore,
The trump of Tartarus blew ghastly wonder. ]
[Footnote 2:
"La bella Armida, di sua forma altiera,
E de' doni del sesso e de l'etate,
L' impresa prende: e in su la prima sera
Parte, e tiene sol vie chiuse e celate:
E 'n treccia e 'n gonna femminile spera
Vincer popoli invitti e schiere armate. "
Canto iv. st. 27. ]
[Footnote 3:
"That sweet grove
Of Daphne by Orontes. "
_Parad. Lost_, b. iv.
It was famous for the most luxurious worship of antiquity. Vide Gibbon,
vol. iii. p. 198. ]
[Footnote 4: I omit a point about "fires" of love, and "ices" of the
heart; and I will here observe, once for all, that I omit many such in
these versions of Tasso, for the reason given in the Preface. ]
[Footnote 5: In the original, an impetuous gust of wind carries away the
sword of Tancred; a circumstance which I mention because Collins admired
it (see his Ode on the Superstitions of the Highlands). I confess I
cannot do so. It seems to me quite superfluous; and when the reader
finds the sword conveniently lying for the hero outside the wood, as he
returns, the effect is childish and pantomimic.
If the magician wished
him not to fight any more, why should he give him the sword back? And if
it was meant as a present to him from Clorinda, what gave her the
power to make the present? Tasso retained both the particulars in the
_Gerusalemme Conquistata_. ]
[Footnote 6:
"Giace l'alta Cartago: appena i segni
De l'alte sue ruine il lido serba.
Muoiono le città: muoiono i regni:
Copre i fasti e le pompe arena ed erba:
E l'uom d'esser mortal par che si sdegni.
Oh nostra mente cupida e superba! "
Canto xv. st. 20.
Great Carthage is laid low. Scarcely can eye
Trace where she stood with all her mighty crowd
For cities die; kingdoms and nations die;
A little sand and grass is all their shroud;
Yet mortal man disdains mortality!
O mind of ours, inordinate and proud!
Very fine is this stanza of Tasso; and yet, like some of the finest
writing of Gray, it is scarcely more than a cento. The commentators call
it a "beautiful imitation" of a passage in Sannazzaro; and it is; but the
passage in Sannazzaro is also beautiful. It contains not only the "Giace
Cartago," and the "appena i segni," &c. , but the contrast of the pride
with the mortality of man, and, above all, the "dying" of the cities,
which is the finest thing in the stanza of its imitator.
"Qua devictae Carthaginis arces
Procubuere, jacentque infausto in littore turres
Eversae; quantum ille metus, quantum illa laborum
Urbs dedit insultans Latio et Laurentibus arvis!
Nunc passim vix reliquias, vix nomina servans,
Obruitur propriis non agnoscenda ruinis.
Et querimur genus infelix, humana labare
Membra aevo, cum regna palam moriantur et urbes. "
_De Partu Virginis_, lib. ii.
The commentators trace the conclusion of this passage to Dante, where he
says that it is no wonder families perish, when cities themselves "have
their terminations" (termin hanuo): but though there is a like germ of
thought in Dante, the mournful flower of it, the word "death," is not
there. It was evidently suggested by a passage (also pointed out by the
commentators) in the consolatory letter of Sulpicius to Cicero, on the
death of his daughter Tullia;--"Heu nos homunculi indignamur, si quis
nostrum interiit, aut occisus est, quorum vita brevior esse debet, cum
uno loco tot oppidorum cadavera projecta jaceant. " (Alas! we poor human
creatures are indignant if any one of us dies or is slain, frail as are
the materials of which we are constituted; and yet we can see, lying
together in one place, the dead bodies of I know not how many cities! )
The music of Tasso's line was indebted to one in Petrarch's _Trionfo del
Tempo, v. 112
_" Passan le signorie, passano i regni;"
and the fine concluding verse, "Oh nostra mente," to another perhaps
in his _Trionfo della Divinità, v. 61_, not without a recollection of
Lucretius, lib. ii. v. 14:
"O miseras hominum menteis! o pectora caeca! "]
[Footnote 7: A fountain which caused laughter that killed people is in
Pomponius Mela's account of the Fortunate Islands; and was the origin of
that of Boiardo; as I ought to have noticed in the place. ]
[Footnote 8: All this description of the females bathing is in the
highest taste of the voluptuous; particularly the latter part:
"Qual mattutina stella esce de l'onde
Rugiadosa e stillante: o come fuore
Spuntò nascendo già da le feconde
Spume de l'ocean la Dea d'Amore:
Tale apparve costei: tal le sue bionde
Chiome stillavan cristallino umore.
Poi girò gli occhi, e pur allor s'infinse
Que' duo vedere, e in se tutta si strinse:
E 'l crin the 'n cima al capo avea raccolto
In un sol nodo, immantinente sciolse;
Che lunghissimo in giù cadendo, e folto,
D'un aureo manto i molli avori involse.
Oh che vago spettacolo è lor tolto!
Ma mon men vago fu chi loro il tolse.
Così da l'acque e da capelli ascosa,
A lor si volse, lieta e vergognosa.
Rideva insieme, e insieme ella arrossia;
Ed era nel rossor più bello il riso,
E nel riso il rossor, the le copria
Insino al mento il delicato viso. "
Canto xv. st. 60.
Spenser, among the other obligations which it delighted him to owe to
this part of Tasso's poem, has translated these last twelve lines:
"With that the other likewise up arose,
And her fair locks, which formerly were bound
Up in one knot, she low adown did loose,
Which, flowing long and thick, her cloth'd around,
And th' ivory in golden mantle gown'd:
So that fair spectacle from him was reft;
Yet that which reft it, no less fair was found.
So hid in locks and waves from looker's theft,
Nought but her lovely face she for his looking left.
Withal she laughèd, and she blush'd withal;
That blushing to her laughter gave more grace,
And laughter to her blushing. "
Fairy Queen, book ii. canto 12, St. 67.
Tasso's translator, Fairfax, worthy both of his original and of Spenser,
has had the latter before him in his version of the passage, not without
a charming addition of his own at the close of the first stanza:
"And her fair locks, that in a knot were tied
High on her crown, she 'gan at large unfold;
Which falling long and thick, and spreading wide,
The ivory soft and white mantled in gold:
Thus her fair skin the dame would clothe and hide;
And that which hid it, no less fair was hold.
Thus clad in waves and locks, her eyes divine
From them ashamed would she turn and twine.
Withal she smilèd, and she blush'd withal;
Her blush her smiling, smiles her blushing graced. "]
[Footnote 9:
"E quel che 'l bello e 'l caro accresce a l'opre,
L'arte, the tutto fa, nulla si scopre.
Stimi (si misto il culto è col negletto)
Sol naturali e gli ornamenti e i siti.
Di natura arte par, the per diletto
L'imitatrice sua scherzando imiti. "
The idea of Nature imitating Art, and playfully imitating her, is in
Ovid; but that of a mixture of cultivation and wildness is, as far as I
am aware, Tasso's own. It gives him the honour of having been the first
to suggest the picturesque principle of modern gardening; as I ought
to have remembered, when assigning it to Spenser in a late publication
(_Imagination and Fancy, p. 109_). I should have noticed also, in the
same work, the obligations of Spenser to the Italian poet for the passage
before quoted about the nymph in the water. ]
[Footnote 10:
"Par che la dura quercia e 'l casto alloro,
E tutta la frondosa ampia famiglia,
Par the la terra e l'acqua e formi e spiri
Dolcissimi d'amor sensi e sospiri. "
St. 16.
Fairfax in this passage is very graceful and happy (in the first part of
his stanza he is speaking of a bird that sings with a human voice--which
I have omitted):
"She ceased: and as approving all she spoke,
The choir of birds their heavenly tunes renew;
The turtles sigh'd, and sighs with kisses broke;
The fowls to shades unseen by pairs withdrew;
It seem'd the laurel chaste and stubborn oak,
And all the gentle trees on earth that grew,
It seem'd the land, the sea, and heaven above,
All breath'd out fancy sweet, and sigh'd out love. "]
[Footnote 11:
"Ecco tra fronde e fronde il guardo avante
Penetra, e vede, o pargli di vedere,
Vede per certo," &c.
St. 17. ]
[Footnote 12: The line about the peacock,
"Spiega la pompa de l'occhiute piume,"
Opens wide the pomp of his eyed plumes,
was such a favourite with Tasso, that he has repeated it from the
_Aminta_, and (I think) in some other place, but I cannot call it to
mind. ]
[Footnote 13:
"Teneri sdegni, e placide e tranquille
Repulse, e cari vezzi, e liete paci,
Sorrisi, e parolette, e dolci stille
Di pianto, e sospir' tronchi, e molli baci. " St. 5
This is the cestus in Homer, which Venus lends to Juno for the purpose of
enchanting Jupiter
Greek: N kai apo staethesphin elusato keston himanta
Poikilon' entha de ohi thelktaeria panta tetukto'
Enth' heni men philotaes, en d' himeras, en d' oaristus,
Parphasis, hae t' eklepse noon puka per phroneonton. ]
Iliad, lib. xiv. 214.
She said; and from her balmy bosom loosed
The girdle that contained all temptinguess--
Love, and desire, and sweet and secret talk
Lavish, which robs the wisest of their wits. ]
APPENDIX
* * * * *
No. I.
THE DEATH OF AGRICAN.
BOIARDO.
Orlando ed Agricane un' altra fiata
Ripreso insieme avean crudel battaglia,
La più terribil mai non fu mirata,
L'arme l'un l'altro a pezzo a pezzo taglia.
Vede Agrican sua gente sbarattata,
Nè le può dar aiuto, che le vaglia.
Però che Orlando tanto stretto il tiene,
Che star con seco a fronte gli conviene.
Nel suo segreto fè questo pensiero,
Trar fuor di schiera quel Conte gagliardo;
E poi Che ucciso l'abbia in su 'l sentiero,
Tornare a la battaglia senza tardo;
Però che a lui par facile e leggiero
Cacciar soletto quel popol codardo;
Chè tutti insieme, e 'l suo Re Galafrone,
Non li stimava quanto un vil bottone.
Con tal proposto si pone a fuggire,
Forte correndo sopra la pianura;
Il Conte nulla pensa a quel fallire,
Anzi crede che 'l faccia per paura.
Senz' altro dubbio se 'l pone a seguire,
E già son giunti ad una selva scura
Appunto in mezzo a quella selva piana,
Era un bel prato intorno a una fontana.
Fermossi ivi Agricane a quella fonte,
E smontò de l'arcion per riposare,
Ma non si tolse l'elmo da la fronte,
Nè piastra, o scudo si volse levare;
E poco dimorò, che giunse 'l Conte,
E come il vide a la fonte aspettare,
Dissegli: Cavalier, tu sei fuggito,
E sì forte mostravi e tanto ardito!
Come tanta vergogna puoi soffrire,
A dar le spalle ad un sol cavaliero!
Forse credesti la morte fuggire,
Or vedi che fallito hai il pensiero;
Chi morir può onorato dee morire;
Che spesse volte avviene e di leggiero,
Che, per durar in questa vita trista,
Morte e vergogna ad un tratto s'acquista.
Agrican prima rimontò in arcione,
Poi con voce soave rispondia
Tu sei per certo il più franco Barone,
Ch'io mai trovassi ne la vita mia,
E però del tuo scampo fia cagione
La tua prodezza e quella cortesia,
Che oggi sì grande al campo usato m'hai,
Quando soccorso a mia gente donai.
Però ti voglio la vita lasciare,
Ma non tornasti più per darmi inciampo.
Questo la fuga mi fè simulare,
Nè v'ebbi altro partito a darti scampo.
Se pur ti piace meco battagliare,
Morto ne rimarrai su questo campo;
Ma siami testimonio il cielo e 'l sole,
Che darti morte mi dispiace e duole.
Il Conte gli rispose molto umano,
Perchè avea preso già di lui pietate;
Quanto sei, disse, più franco e soprano,
Più di te mi rincresce in veritate,
Che sarai morto, e non sei Cristiano,
Ed anderai tra l'anime dannate;
Ma se vuoi il corpo e l'anima salvare,
Piglia battesmo, e lascierotti andare.
Disse Agricane, e riguardollo in viso:
Se tu sei Cristiano, Orlando sei.
Chi mi facesse Re del Paradiso,
Con tal ventura non la cangierei;
Ma sin or ti ricordo e dotti avviso,
Che non mi parli de' fatti de' Dei,
Perchè potresti predicar invano;
Difenda it suo ciascun co 'l brando in mano.
Nè più parole; ma trasse Tranchera,
E verso Orlando con ardir s'affronta.
Or si comincia la battaglia fiera,
Con aspri colpi, di taglio e di ponta;
Ciascun è di prodezza una lumiera,
E sterno insieme, com'il libro conta,
Da mezzo giorno insino a notte scura,
Sempre più franchi a la battaglia dura.
Ma poi che 'l sol avea passato il monte
E cominciossi a far il ciel stellato,
Prima verso del Re parlava it Conte;
Che farem, disse, the 'l giorno n'è andato?
Disse Agricane, con parole pronte:
Ambi ci poseremo in questo prato,
E domattina, come il giorno appare,
Ritorneremo insieme a battagliare.
Così d'accordo il partito si prese;
Lega il destrier ciascun come gli piace,
Poi sopra a l'erba verde si distese:
Come fosse tra loro antica pace,
L'uno a l'altro vicino era e palese.
Orlando presso al fonte isteso giace,
Ed Agricane al bosco più vicino
Stassi colcato, a l'ombra d'un gran pino.
E ragionando insieme tutta via
Di cose degne e condecenti a loro,
Guardava il Conte il ciel, poscia dicia:
Questo the ora veggiamo, è un bel lavoro,
Che fece la divina Monarchia,
La luna d'argento e le stelle d'oro,
E la luce del giorno e 'l sol lucente,
Dio tutto ha fatto per l'umana gente.
Disse Agricane: Io comprendo per certo,
Che to vuoi de la fede ragionare;
Io di nulla scienza son esperto,
Nè mai sendo fanciul, volsi imparare;
E ruppi il capo al maestro mio per merto;
Poi non si potè un altro ritrovare,
Che mi mostrasse libro, nè scrittura,
Tanto ciascun avea di me paura.
E così spesi la mia fanciullezza,
In caccie, in giochi d'arme e in cavalcare;
Nè mi par che convenga a gentilezza,
Star tutto il giorno ne' libri a pensare;
Ma la forza del corpo e la destrezza
Conviensi al cavaliero esercitare;
Dottrina al prete, ed al dottor sta bene;
Io tanto saccio quanto mi conviene.
Rispose Orlando: Io tiro teco a un seguo,
Che l'armi son del'uomo il primo onore;
Ma non già che 'l saper faccia un men degno,
Anzi l'adorna com' un prato il fiore;
Ed è simile a un bove, a un sasso, a un legno,
Che non pensa a l'eterno Creatore;
Nè ben si puo pensar, senza dottrina,
La somma maestade, alta e divina.
Disse Agricane: Egli è gran scortesia
A voler contrastar con avvantaggio.
Io t' ho scoperto la natura mia,
E to conosco, the sei dotto e saggio;
Se più parlassi, io non risponderia;
Piacendoti dormir, dormiti ad aggio;
E se meco parlar hai pur diletto,
D'arme o d' amor a ragionar t' aspetto.
Ora ti prego, che a quel ch' io domando
Risponda il vero, a fè d' uomo pregiato;
Se in se' veramente quell' Orlando,
Che vien tanto nel mondo nominato;
E perchè qui sei giunto, e come, e quando;
E se mai fosti ancora innamorato;
Perche ogni cavalier, ch'è senza amore,
Se in vista è vivo, vivo senza core.
Rispose il Conte: Quell' Orlando sono,
Che uccise Almonte e'l suo fratel Troiano;
Amor m' ha posto tutto in abbandono,
E venir fammi in questo luogo strano.
E perchè teco piu largo ragiono,
Voglio the sappi che 'l mio cor è in mano
De la figliuola del Re Galafrone,
Che ad Albracca dimora nel girone.
Tu fai co 'l padre guerra a gran furore,
Per prender suo paese e sua castella;
Ed io quà son condotto per amore,
E per piacer a quella damisella;
Molte fiate son stato per onore
E per la fede mia sopra la sella;
Or sol per acquistar la bella dama
Faccio battaglia, e d'altro non ho brama.
Quando Agrican ha nel parlare accolto,
Che questo è Orlando, ed Angelica amava,
Fuor di misura si turbò nel volto,
Ma per la notte non lo dimostrava;
Piangeva sospirando come un stolto,
L'anima e 'l petto e 'l spirto gli avvampava,
E tanto gelosia gli batte il core,
Che non è vivo, e di doglia non more.
Poi disse a Orlando: Tu debbi pensare,
Che come il giorno sarà dimostrato,
Debbiamo insieme la battaglia fare,
E l'uno o l'altro rimarrà su 'l prato.
Or d'una cosa ti voglio pregare,
Che, prima che vegnamo e cotal piato,
Quella donzella, che 'l tuo cor disia,
Tu l'abbandoni e lascila per mia.
Io non potria patire, essendo vivo,
Che altri con meco amasse il viso adorno:
O l'uno o l'altro al tutto sarà privo
Del spirto e de la dama al novo giorno;
Altri mai non saprà, che questo rivo
E questo bosco, ch'è quivi d'intorno,
Che l'abbi rifiutata in cotal loco
E in cotal tempo, che sarà sì poco.
Diceva Orlando al Re: Le mie promesse
Tutte ho servate, quante mai ne fei;
Ma se quel che or mi chiedi io promettesse
E s'io il giurassi, io non l'attenderei;
Così poria spiccar mie membra istesse
E levarmi di fronte gli occhi miei,
E viver senza spirto e senza core,
Come lasciar d' Angelica l'amore.
Il Re Agrican, che ardeva oltre misura,
Non puote tal risposta comportare;
Benchè sia 'l mezzo de la notte scura,
Prese Bajardo e su v' ebbe a montare,
Ed orgoglioso, con vista sicura,
Isgrida al Conte, ed ebbel a sfidare,
Dicendo: Cavalier, la dama gaglia
Lasciar convienti, o far meco battaglia.
Era già il Conte in su l' arcion salito,
Perchè, come si mosse il Re possente,
Temendo dal Pagan esser tradito,
Saltò sopra 'l destrier subitamente;
Onde rispose con animo ardito:
Lasciar colei non posso per niente;
E s'io potess, ancora io non vorria;
Avertela convien per altra via.
Come in mar la tempesta a gran fortuna,
Cominciarno l' assalto i cavalieri
Nel verde prato, per la notte bruna,
Con sproni urtarno addosso i buon destrieri;
E si scorgeano al lume de la luna,
Dandosi colpi dispietati e fieri,
Ch' era ciascun difor forte ed ardito
Ma più non dico; il Canto è quì finito.
ARIOSTO.
Seguon gli Scotti ove la guida loro
Per l'alta selva alto disdegno mena,
Poi che lasciato ha l'uno e l'altro Moro,
L'un morto in tutto, e l'altro vivo a pena.
Giacque gran pezzo il giovine Medoro,
Spicciando il sangue da sì larga vena,
Che di sua vita al fin saria venuto,
Se non sopravenia chi gli diè aiuto.
Gli sopravenne a caso una donzella,
Avvolta in pastorale et umil veste,
Ma di real presenzia, e in viso bella,
D'alte maniere e accortamente oneste.
Tanto è ch'io non ne dissi più novella,
Ch'a pena riconoscer la dovreste;
Questa, se non sapete, Angelica era,
Del gran Can del Catai la figlia altiera.
Poi che 'l suo annello Angelica riebbe,
Di the Brunel l'avea tenuta priva,
In tanto fasto, in tanto orgoglio crebbe,
Ch'esser parea di tutto 'l mondo schiva:
Se ne va sola, e non si degnerebbe
Compagno aver qual più famoso viva;
Si sdegna a rimembrar the già suo amante
Abbia Orlando nomato, o Sacripante.
E, sopra ogn'altro error, via più pentita
Era del ben che già a Rinaldo volse.
Troppo parendole essersi avvilita,
Ch'a riguardar sì basso gli occhi volse.
Tant'arroganzia avendo Amor sentita,
Più lungamente comportar non volse.
Dove giacea Medor, si pose al varco,
E l'aspettò, posto lo strale all'arco.
Quando Angelica vide il giovinetto
Languir ferito, assai vicino a morte,
Che del suo Re che giacea senza tetto,
Più che del proprio mal, si dolea forte,
Insolita pietade in mezo al petto
Si sentì entrar per disusate porte,
Che le fe' il duro cor tenero e molle;
E più quando il suo caso egli narrolle.
E rivocando alla memoria l'arte
Ch'in India imparò già chirurgia,
(Chè par che questo studio in quella parte
Nobile e degno e di gran laude sia;
E, senza molto rivoltar di carte,
Che 'l patre a i figli ereditario il dia)
Si dispose operar con succo d'erbe,
Ch'a più matura vita lo riserbe.
E ricordossi che passando avea
Veduta un'erba in una piaggia amena;
Fosse dittamo, o fosse panacea,
O non so qual di tal effetto piena,
Che stagna il sangue, e de la piaga rea
Leva ogni spasmo e perigliosa pena,
La trovò non lontana, e, quella côlta,
Dove lasciato avea Medor, diè volta.
Nel ritornar s'incontra in un pastore,
Ch'a cavallo pel bosco ne veniva
Cercando una iuvenca, che gli fuore
Duo dì di mandra e senza guardia giva.
Seco lo trasse ove perdea il vigore
Medor col sangue che del petto usciva;
E già n'avea di tanto il terren tinto,
Ch'era omai presso a rimanere estinto.
Del palafreno Angelica giù scese,
E scendere il pastor seco fece anche.
Pestò con sassi l'erba, indi la presse,
E succo ne cavò fra le man bianche:
Ne la piaga n'infuse, e ne distese
E pel petto e pel ventre e fin a l'anche;
E fu di tal virtù questo liquore,
Che stagnò il sangue e gli tornò il vigore:
E gli diè forza, che poté salire
Sopra il cavallo the 'l pastor condusse.
Non però volse indi Medor partire
Prima ch'in terra il suo signor non fosse,
E Cloridan col Re fe' sepelire;
E poi dove a lei piacque si ridusse;
Et ella per pietà ne l'umil case
Del cortese pastor seco rimase.
Nè, fin che nol tornasse in sanitade,
Volea partir: così di lui fe' stima:
Tanto sè intenerì de la pietade
Che n'ebbe, come in terra il vide prima.
Poi, vistone i costumi e la beltade,
Roder si sentì il cor d'ascosa lima;
Roder si sentì il core, e a poco a poco
Tutto infiammato d'amoroso fuoco.
Stava il pastore in assai buona e bella
Stanza, nel bosco infra duo monti piatta,
Con la moglie e co i figli; et avea quella
Tutta di nuovo e poco inanzi fatta.
Quivi a Medoro fu per la donzella
La piaga in breve a sanità ritratta;
Ma in minor tempo si sentì maggiore
Piaga di questa avere ella nel core.
Assai più larga piaga e più profonda
Nel cor senti da non veduto strale,
Che da' begli occhi e da la testa bionda
Di Medoro avventè l'arcier c'ha l'ale.
Arder si sente, e sempre il fuoco abonda,
E più cura l'altrui che 'l proprio male.
Di sè non cura; e non è ad altro intenta,
Ch'a risanar chi lei fere e tormenta.
La sua piaga più s'apre e più incrudisce,
Quanto piu l' altra si restringe e salda.
Il giovine si sana: ella languisce
Di nuova febbre, or agghiacciata or calda.
Di giorno in giorno in lui beltà fiorisce:
La mísera si strugge, come falda
Strugger di nieve intempestiva suole,
Ch'in loco aprico abbia scoperta il sole.
Se di disio non vuol morir, bisogna
Che senza indugio ella sè stessa aïti:
E ben le par che, di quel ch' essa agogna,
Non sia tempo aspettar ch' altri la 'nviti.
Dunque, rotto ogni freno di vergogna,
La lingua ebbe non men che gli occhi arditi;
E di quel colpo domandò mercede,
Che, forse non sapendo, esso le diede.
O Conte Orlando, o Re di Circassia,
Vestra inclita virtù, dite, che giova?
Vostro alto onor, dite, in che prezzo sia?
O che merce vostro servir ritruova?
Mostratemi una sola cortesia,
Che mai costei v'usasse, o vecchia o nuova,
Per ricompensa e guidardone e merto
Di quanto avete già per lei sofferto.
Oh, se potessi ritornar mai vivo,
Quanto ti parria duro, o Re Agricane!
Che già mostrò costei sì averti a schivo
Con repulse crudeli et inumane.
O Ferraù, o mille altri ch'io non scrivo,
Ch'avete fatto mille pruove vane
Per questa ingrata, quanto aspro vi fora
S'a costu' in braccio voi la vedesse ora!
Angelica a Medor la prima rôsa
Coglier lasciò, non ancor tocca inante;
Nè persona fu mai si avventurosa,
Ch'in quel giardin potesse por le piante.
Per adombrar, per onestar la cosa,
Si celebrò con cerimonie sante
Il matrimonio, ch'auspice ebbe Amore,
E pronuba la moglie del pastore.
Fêrsi le nozze sotto all'umil tetto
Le più solenni che vi potean farsi;
E più d'un mese poi stero a diletto
I duo tranquilli amanti a ricrearsi.
Più lunge non vedea del giovinetto
La donna, nè di lui potea saziarsi:
Nè, per mai sempre pendegli dal cello,
Il suo disir sentìa di lui satollo.
Se stava all'ombra, o se del tetto usciva,
Avea dì e notte il bel giovine a lato:
Matino e sera or questa or quella riva
Cercando andava, o qualche verde prato:
Nel mezo giorno un antro li copriva,
Forse non men di quel commodo e grato
Ch'ebber, fuggendo l'acque, Enea e Dido,
De' lor secreti testimonio fido.
Fra piacer tanti, ovunque un arbor dritto
Vedesse ombrare o fonte o rivo puro,
V'avea spillo o coltel subito fitto;
Così, se v'era alcun sasso men duro.
Et era fuori in mille luoghi scritto,
E così in casa in altri tanti il muro,
Angelica e Medoro, in varii modi
Legati insieme di diversi nodi.
Poi che le parve aver fatto soggiorno
Quivi più ch'a bastanza, fe' disegno
Di fare in India del Catai ritorno,
E Medor coronar del suo bel regno.
Portava al braccio un cerchio d'oro, adorno
Di ricche gemme, in testimonio e segno
Del ben che 'l Conte Orlando le volea;
E portato gran tempo ve l'avea.
Quel dono già Morgana a Ziliante,
Nel tempo the nel lago ascoso il tenne;
Et esso, poi ch'al padre Monodante
Per opra e per virtù d'Orlando venne,
Lo diede a Orlando: Orlando ch'era amante,
Di porsi al braccio it cerchio d'or sostenne,
Avendo disegnato di donarlo
Alla Regina sua di ch'io vi parlo.
Non per amor del Paladino, quanto
Perch'era ricco e d'artificio egregio,
Caro avuto l'avea la donna tanto
Che più non si può aver cosa di pregio.
Sè lo serbò ne l'Isola del pianto,
Non so già dirvi con the privilegio,
Là dove esposta al marin mostro nuda
Fu da la gente inospitale e cruda.
Quivi non si trovando altra mercede,
Ch'al buon pastore et alla moglie dessi,
Che serviti gli avea con sì gran fede
Dal dì che nel suo albergo si fur messi;
Levò dal braccio il cerchio, e gli lo diede,
E volse per suo amor che lo tenessi;
Indi saliron verso la montagna
Che divide la Francia da la Spagna.
Dentro a Valenza o dentro a Barcellona
Per qualche giorno avean pensato porsi,
Fin che accadesse alcuna nave buona,
Che per Levante apparecchiasse a sciorsi.
Videro il mar scoprir sotto a Girona
Ne lo smontar giù de i montani dorsi;
E, costeggiando a man sinistra il lito,
A Barcellona andâr pel camin trito.
Ma non vi giunser prima ch'un uom pazzo
Giacer trovaro in su l'estreme arene,
Che, come porco, di loto e di guazzo
Tutto era brutto, e volto e petto e schene.
Costui si scagliò lor, come cagnazzo
Ch' assalir forestier subito viene;
E diè for noia e fu per far lor scorno.
* * * * *
The troop then follow'd where their chief had gone,
Pursuing his stern chase among the trees,
And leave the two companions there alone,
One surely dead, the other scarcely less.
Long time Medoro lay without a groan,
Losing his blood in such large quantities,
That life would surely have gone out at last,
Had not a helping hand been coming past.
There came, by chance, a damsel passing there,
Dress'd like a shepherdess in lowly wise,
But of a royal presence, and an air
Noble as handsome, with clear maiden eyes.
'Tis so long since I told you news of her,
Perhaps you know her not in this disguise.
This, you must know then, was Angelica,
Proud daughter of the Khan of great Cathay.
You know the magic ring and her distress?
Well, when she had recover'd this same ring,
It so increas'd her pride and haughtiness,
She seem'd too high for any living thing.
She goes alone, desiring nothing less
Than a companion, even though a king
She even scorns to recollect the flame
Of one Orlando, or his very name.
But, above all, she hates to recollect
That she had taken to Rinaldo so;
She thinks it the last want of self-respect,
Pure degradation, to have look'd so low.
"Such arrogance," said Cupid, "must be check'd. "
The little god betook him with his bow
To where Medoro lay; and, standing by,
Held the shaft ready with a lurking eye.
Now when the princess saw the youth all pale,
And found him grieving with his bitter wound,
Not for what one so young might well bewail,
But that his king should not be laid in ground,--
She felt a something strange and gentle steal
Into her heart by some new way it found,
Which touch'd its hardness, and turn'd all to grace;
And more so, when he told her all his case.
And calling to her mind the little arts
Of healing, which she learnt in India,
(For 'twas a study valued in those parts
Even by those who were in sovereign sway,
And yet so easy too, that, like the heart's,
'Twas more inherited than learnt, they say),
She cast about, with herbs and balmy juices,
To save so fair a life for all its uses.
And thinking of an herb that caught her eye
As she was coming, in a pleasant plain
(Whether 'twas panacea, dittany,
Or some such herb accounted sovereign
For stanching blood quickly and tenderly,
And winning out all spasm and bad pain),
She found it not far off, and gathering some,
Returned with it to save Medoro's bloom.
In coming back she met upon the way
A shepherd, who was riding through the wood
To find a heifer that had gone astray,
And been two days about the solitude.
She took him with her where Medoro lay,
Still feebler than he was with loss of blood;
So much he lost, and drew so hard a breath,
That he was now fast fading to his death.
Angelica got off her horse in haste,
And made the shepherd get as fast from his;
She ground the herbs with stones, and then express'd
With her white hands the balmy milkiness;
Then dropp'd it in the wound, and bath'd his breast,
His stomach, feet, and all that was amiss
And of such virtue was it, that at length
The blood was stopp'd, and he look'd round with strength.
At last he got upon the shepherd's horse,
But would not quit the place till he had seen
Laid in the ground his lord and master's corse;
And Cloridan lay with it, who had been
Smitten so fatally with sweet remorse.
He then obey'd the will of the fair queen;
And she, for very pity of his lot,
Went and stay'd with him at the shepherd's cot.
Nor would she leave him, she esteem'd him so,
Till she had seen him well with her own eye;
So full of pity did her bosom grow,
Since first she saw him faint and like to die.
Seeing his manners now, and beauty too,
She felt her heart yearn somehow inwardly;
She felt her heart yearn somehow, till at last
'Twas all on fire, and burning warm and fast.
The shepherd's home was good enough and neat,
A little shady cottage in a dell
The man had just rebuilt it all complete,
With room to spare, in case more births befell.
There with such knowledge did the lady treat
Her handsome patient, that he soon grew well;
But not before she had, on her own part,
A secret wound much greater in her heart.
Much greater was the wound, and deeper far,
Which the sweet arrow made in her heart's strings;
'Twas from Medoro's lovely eyes and hair;
'Twas from the naked archer with the wings.
She feels it now; she feels, and yet can bear
Another's less than her own sufferings.
She thinks not of herself: she thinks alone
How to cure him by whom she is undone.
The more his wound recovers and gets ease,
Her own grows worse, and widens day by day.
The youth gets well; the lady languishes,
Now warm, now cold, as fitful fevers play.
His beauty heightens, like the flowering trees;
She, miserable creature, melts away
Like the weak snow, which some warm sun has found
Fall'n, out of season, on a rising ground.
And must she speak at last, rather than die?
