3995359The Amyntas of Tasso — Act I.Percival StockdaleTorquato Tasso

AMYNTAS.

ACT I.

SCENE I.
DAPHNE and SYLVIA.

DAPHNE.
WILT thou, then, Silvia, waste the bloom of youth,
Rejecting, sullenly, the joys of love?
Say, shall a mother's tender, moving name,
Never be music to thy callous ear?
Can thy obdurate soul conceive no bliss,
To see thy sportive children round thee play?
Nay, humanize thy breast; put on the woman;
Nor be a rebel to the voice of nature.

SYLVIA.
Let other nymphs court the delights of love;
If love indeed has more delights than pains;
A hardy, Amazonian life be mine:
Let but my bow with happy negligence
Be flung, my quiver gracefully depend;
And I shall think my person well adorned.
Let me the timid hare, or stag pursue;
Let me the foremost brave the fiercer savage,
Urge the nice aim, and bring him to the ground;
And I shall never, Daphne, want employment
To keep the working mind enough in action.
Let other maids, of a more languid frame,
Their souls enervate with destructive love.

DAPHNE.
Insipid pleasures! an unnatural life!
And if those rustic occupations please thee,
It is because thou hast not proved sublimer.
Thus to the world yet in its infant state,
Acorns and water were a sweet repast;
The food of animals in better times!
For Ceres gives us now her golden grain,
And wine exhilerates the heart of man.
Did but the happiness once reach thy soul,
Such as a heart loving and loved enjoys,
Thou wouldst repent, thou wouldst with sighs exclaim -
—Alas! I've missed the road to Happiness!
The time is lost that is not passed in love!
How long I've lived a vegetable life,
How long I've wanted sentimental being!
Oh! my past time! how many lonely nights,
How many dull unsocial days I've wasted,
That might have been laid out on mutual love,
Which gains new zest, and rises on enjoyment!
Once more, refine thy breast; put on the woman,
Nor be a rebel to the voice of nature.
Life's flower will fade; regret may come too late.

SYLVIA.
When I repent, when I with sighs exclaim,
As thy luxurious fancy painteth me,
Retorted rivers to their springs shall flow;
The wolf shall fly the lamb, the hound the hare;
The bear shall quit the land, and seek the sea;
The dolphin flounce upon our towering Alps.

DAPHNE.
I know the obstinate caprice of youth:
Such as my Sylvia is, was Daphne too.
My person, and my face, resembled thine.
Like thine my hair in flaxen ringlets waved.
My lips were just of that vermilion hue;
And on my cheeks the rose by fine degrees
Was in the lily lost. My passion then,
(The passion of an unexperienced maid)
Was but to tend the nets, to lime the twigs,
To whet the dart, and trace the timorous deer;
And if I met a shepherd’s amorous eye,
I, savage-like, fixed mine upon the ground,
In shame, and rage; nay I despised my charms,
I hated them, because they pleased another.
As if it had been crime, and infamy,
To raise a passion wrought in human nature.
But how our sentiments are changed by time!
And what strange revolutions in us work
The service, merit, ardent supplications
Of an importunate, and constant lover!
I was subdued, I own it; and the arms,
With which the victor gained, at length, his conquest,
Were, humble patience, sighs, and warm complaints,
Assisted by a female sympathy,
That pleads the cause of an impassioned lover.
The shades oracular of one short night
Threw more illumination on my mind,
Than many a hundred suns had done before.
I chid my folly, and with keen regret,
I said—the emblems which I long have worn
As thy disciple, Cynthia, now I quit——
I quit my bow, my passion for the chace;
Sport for untutored souls, but not for mine:
Love hath reclaimed me to my sexis joys.
With such humanity, I yet would hope,
Amyntas will his Sylvia's mind impress,
And mollify to love that heart of stone.
That heart by every title he should gain.
What more engaging youth adorns our hamlets?
Did ever shepherd burn with warmer love?
Say, do not rival nymphs bleed for Amyntas?
Yet can their fame, or can thy cruel scorn,
One moment turn his constant thoughts from thee;
Can'st thou pretend his birth discredits țhine?
The fair Cydippe was thy mother; she
Claimed for her sire our noble river-god;
And is not he Silvanus' son, of whom
Pan is the father, the great god of shepherds?
Look in the mirror of the chrystal stream,
And Sylvia, thou must own that Amaryllis
Possesses beauty not less rare than thine.
Yet he rejects her smiles, and courts thy frowns,
Suppose (determined man can do strange things,
Heaven grant the supposition may be vain!)
That he, by thy disdain at length, enraged,
Turns all his thoughts on Amaryllis' charms;
And forms her, by imagination's power,
Into his object of connubial bliss?
What then will be thy mind? how will it bear
To think him irretrievably another's?
To think him happy in a rival's arms?
To see him give thee back thy haughty scorn?

SYLVIA.
Amyntas, as he pleases, may bestow
His heart, and person; 'tis not my concern.
He never can be mine; why should I then
Envy the fortune of the maid he chuses?
Nay~were he mine, I never could be his:
Affection shrinks; it withers on compulsion.

DAPHNE.
Whence your aversion to him?

SYLVIA.
From his love.

DAPHNE.
Effect inhuman from a cause benign!
Obdurate son sprung from a gentle fire!
Thou counteractest nature's general laws.
Do the mild sheep ingender ravenous wolves?
Do snowy swans produce the sooty crow?
Sylvia, you either trifle with you friend,
Or with yourself, misled by female whim.

SYLVIA.
Amyntasis design makes me dislike him;
The man who proffers love I count my foe;
Under t h e specious word destruction lurks
And while Amyntas passed his hours with me
In general converse, and in light amusement,
I own, my Daphne, I esteemed the swain.
But when he talked of serious, fatal love,
Disgust succeeded straight my friendship for him.

DAPHNE.
You quite mistake the object of your swain
He means to make himself and Sylvia happy.

SYLVIA.
Daphne, I'll give no longer my attention
To such discourse; propose some other theme.

DAPHNE.
Thou supercilious girl! yet prithee tell me;
Art thou determined to accept no lover?

SYLVIA.
Whoe'er should make the proffer, I'd reject him;
I'd deem him a betrayer; one who lay
In artful, flowery ambush for my honour.
Such you call lovers; I call deadly foes.

DAPHNE.
The mild creation contradicts thy spleen.
Yonder the sheep are grazing, harmless race!
And if we knew not their innoxious life,
Their very bleat bespeaks their innocence.
Say does the ram conspire against his ewe?
Does his breast harbour any black design?
The lordly bull, so dreadful in his wrath,
Whose roar, and levelled head, and pawing hoof,
Wither the stoutest mortal with affright,
Is to his heifer mild; to her he shows
No rougher treatment than his clumsy love.
Dost thou imagine that the faithful turtle
Intends hostility against his mate?
The constant pair seek a sequestered shade,
Far from the noise, the violence of man:
There do they perch, and in the soft caress,
And tender dialogue they pass the day.
Their voice announces their pathetic souls,
Their souls pathetic, breathing nought but love.
And while they coo, the corresponding woods,
The rugged rocks, seem to admire their flame.
Canst thou suppose the spring, the smiling spring,
When love diffuses all his genial influence,
A season that produces gloomy passions?
Now the gay period reigns; mark it's effects.
Observe the dove, seated on yonder elm;
With soothing murmur how he bills his mate.
Hark the sweet nightingale on yonder spray;
What harmony distends his little throat!
'Tis love's warm imagery that fires his breast;
And pours his raptured sentiments in musick.
The shifting scenes of love are all before him;
I hear it in the changes of his voice.
Listen, my Sylvia—now in short, timid accents,
He supplicates his mistress—but in vain;
Now he laments, and as he feels her rigour,
Breathes forth a lengthened, liquid, dying note
Oh! his complaint has won her: he concludes
In joyful flourishes, in strains of triumph.
'Tis love that animates his varied song;
He says in every note—"I love, I love."
Even the dark adder, at this social season,
Intent on love, forgets his baleful poison:
The fierceness of the tiger is subdued,
The lordly lion, king of beasts is humbled.
Why on the brute creation need I dwell?
The mighty power of love pervades the trees.
See how the amorous vines embrace their elms;
Beeches for beeches, rugged oaks for oaks
Express their inclination by their dress,
Their whispering rustle, and consenting wave.
Would'st thou then rank thyself below the plants,
Dead to the lively sentiments of love?
Shake off thy prejudice; put on the woman,
Nor be a rebel to the voice of nature.

SYLVIA.
Well, Daphne, when I hear the sighs of plants,
I frankly will consent to be a lover.

DAPHNE.
Sylvia, thy folly only can be equalled
By thy insensibility to love.
Dost thou then make advice, and argument
The ill-timed subject of insipid banter?
But go, thou foolish maid; the time will come
When thou in vain severely wilt repent
Thy inattention to my friendly lessons,
I speak not of that mortifying time
When thou shalt fly the mirror of the stream,
Where oft thy face thou viewest, and perhaps,
Unfeeling as thou art, dost oft admire it:
The time when thou shalt fly the limpid fountain,
Dreading to see the ruins of thy beauty,
The furrows of old age, thy withered hue,
Spoiled of the lily, and the rose, for ever;
The certain havock of life's cruel winter.
No, Sylvia, this is not the dreadful time,
Nor this the evil of which I forewarn thee;
'Tis common, and 'tis therefore not so galling.
Can'st thou not recollect what sage Elpinus
Told, a few days ago, the fair Lycoris?——
Lycoris, who as deeply should imbibe
Soft passion from Elpinus' noble song
As he receives it from Lycoris' eye;
If mortals once could love by reason's laws.
Battus, and Thyrsis heard Elpinus tell it,
Both finished masters in the art of love.
He told it in Aurora's sacred cave,
Where, o’er the portal awfully is written,
“Be feet profane far from this hallowed place.”
He told us—and he said he had the truth
From the great bard, who sung of arms and love,
And dying left him his harmonious flute;
———That in the nether world there is a cave,
Gloomy and drear, where lazy Acheron
Sends forth sulphureous, pestilential vapour;
And in that cave, he said, ungrateful women
Would live eternally, by Heaven's decree,
In darkness, frantick grief, and Stygian anguish.
Sylvia, if you persist to steel your heart,
Expect a mansion in that dire abode.
Well do the wretches in another state
Deserve to suffer unremitted torment,
Whom tears of misery never moved in this.

SYLVIA.
What did Lycoris then; how did she answer
This strange denunciation?

DAPHNE.
Art thou anxious
To know another's conduct?—mend thy own.
She answered with her eyes.

SYLVIA.
I understand not that:
The eye is mute; how can it form an answer?

DAPHNE.
A novice thou to love's expressive language!
The soft and strong emotions of the soul
In magick beams are darted from the eye.
She smiled on her Elpinus with her eyes:
I marked them—these were their distinct expressions.
"Dear swain, my person, and my heart are thine.
"Implore the deities of love no more,
"No further testimony can I give thee
"Of my affection now; this is enough
"For modest nymph to give, chaste swain to take.
"Enough thou wilt esteem it, if Elpinus
"Honest as bright believes Lycoris' eyes;
"If they deserve at once his faith and love.

SYLVIA.
What reason had he to suspect their truth?

DAPHNE.
What? didst thou never hear what Thyrsis wrote
In love's delirium, on Lycoris' eyes?
When the poor shepherd, stung to amorous frenzy,
Roamed through the lonely woods, to feed his passion,
Object of pity to the nymphs, and swains:
And so extravagant his passion was,
Their pity was accompanied with mirth.
But his warm verse was not ridiculous.
I read the lines myself, which he had written
On many a tree; and with the trees they grew.
"Destructive eyes, false mirrors of her heart!
“I, to my sorrow know the lies you've told me:
“Yet what avails it me to know your lies,
“If I still wish to view the basilisk,
“And catch fresh ruin from your fatal rays?"

SYLVIA.
Daphne, I'm wasting here my precious time,
Harangued, in vain, by thy luxurious fancy.
I had forgotten that in Elicetum
A numerous hunting party meets to-day.
Thither I go; but in the wonted stream
First will I bathe, and cleanse me from the dust
Of yesterday; 'twas a fatiguing chace;
The stag our game, which I, with warm career
Persued, the foremost; overtook, and killed.
Daphne farewell.

DAPHNE.
Sylvia farewel, but know
What to our gentle sex we women owe;
Know, that the boisterous pleasure of the chace
Is not the province of the female race.
It brutifies the temper of a man;
How distant is it then from woman's plan!
Our spirits ought to keep a tender strain,
Refine delight, and blunt the sting of pain.
Abjure the chace; be present to thy mind,
The sphere by heaven to rural charms assigned.
—Let rough barbarians bound o'er hill and plain,
Be ours the talk to bless the humble swain;
The sameness of his station to beguile,
Crown his gay hours, and make his labour smile:
And when the business of the day is done,
When he hies homeward with the setting sun,
To give him sweet ideas of his cot,
And make him triumph in his peaceful lot;
To make him there expect domestick joy,
The wife assiduous, and the prattling boy;
To draw Elysium on our state below,
And bliss which wealth and grandeur never know.

SCENE II.
AMYNTAS, and THYRSIS.

AMYNTAS.
Thyrsis, the gentle streams have not denied
Their sympathetick murmur to my woes.
I've known the trees, with softly-trembling leaves,
Whisper their pity to my warm complaint:
The rocks have softened as I poured my lay.
Harder than rocks I find my cruel fair:
Her breast will ne'er admit my moving tale.
Doth she deserve the tender name of woman?
No; she hath quite renounced her feeling sex,
The delicate emotions of her nature;
Since she denies her lover that compassion
Which even the world inanimate vouchsafes him.

THYRSIS.
'Tis the lamb's joy to crop the tender herbs
The wolf's regale is to devour the lamb;
But more inexorable love delights
In the fell homage of a harsher tribute;
Sighs are his incense; his libation, tears.

AMYNTAS.
Alas! my Thyrsis, love is surely sated
With my reiterated sighs, and tears:
The savage god is thirsting for my blood;
And soon it shall be shed; soon shall stern Cupid,
With sterner Sylvia; view my deadly wound,
And with their eyes enjoy life's crimson flood,
My spreading paleness, and my last convulsions.

THYRSIS.
You rave, Amyntas; moderate you passion
With reason; you may find another mistress,
If you're despised by this inhuman fair one.

AMYNTAS.
Another mistress find!—I've lost myself:
When grim despair with his chill hand hath seized us,
And broken nature's elasticity,
We look around for solace, but in vain.

THYRSIS.
Weak-hearted man!—drive off the fiend, despair:
Firm perseverance yet may gain the nymph.
What will not time, and perseverance do!
The keen progression of the mind of man
Changes in every age the face of nature:
Nought is too wondrous for its force, and art;
It tames the lions, and Hyrcanian tygers.

AMYNTAS.
But my distress will not admit delay:
I long for shelter in the quiet grave.

THYRSIS.
You will not need to brook a long delay;
Woman is angry soon, and soon appeased;
A childish, volatile, capricious things;
By trifling motives different ways inclined,
As is the nodding ear of golden Ceres,
Or limber osier by the lightest air.
But sure Amyntas might acquaint his Thyrsis
With the whole secret of his hapless passion.
You have to me lamented oft your flame;
But you have never yet told me it's object.
It is a trust you may repose in me,
A trust to friendship, and the Muses due.
Together oft we cultivate the Muses,
And with their scenes enrich our simple life:
Oft do the Muses on a beauteous eve,
The sky serene, and drowsy nature hushed,
We tending homewards through the silent vale,
Vouchsafe celestial sounds to rural ears;
And raise our humble minds above their stretch,
With such warm fancy, such ethereal forms,
As scape the vulgar intellectual eye.
These views, Amyntas, should enlarge thy soul,
Pardon the kind rebuke, and make thee know
Where thou may'st lodge it in full confidence.
Why need I launch into the praise of friendship?
Friendship the best support of wretched man!
Which gives us, when our life is painful to us,
A sweet existence in another's being!
Revere, O swain, the sacred rights of friendship.

AMYNTAS.
Thyrsis, I'll tell without reserve to thee,
What oft I've told to streams, and trees, and mountains,
But never yet revealed to human ear.
For as my death approaches, I would wish
To leave my story with my faithful friend,
That he at proper junctures might relate it,
And carve it on some venerable beech,
Under whose boughs I have my sepulture;
A useful monument to future swains.
Then may the cruel fair-one tread my ashes;
Then may she say, with barbarous exultation,
“Thus have my powerful charms completely triumphed.”
Then may her triumph be increased, to find
My tale is known to all the neighbouring swains,
Is known to many a traveller who by chance
Bends to the melancholy spot his way.
And, Thyrsis, may not I presume (alas!
I hope the honour of too great a boon)
That Sylvia, one day, will repent her harshness;
Will feel her heart melt with too late compassion;
Will love my memory, and by oft comparing
Amyntas living with Amyntas dead,
Comparison which kills the worst resentments,
Break into some such tender exclamation—
"—Oh! were he yet on earth; and were he mine!"
Now, Thyrsis, hear.

THYRSIS.
Proceed; I mark thee well;
Haply for better purpose than thou weenest.

AMYNTAS.
When yet I was a boy; when yet my hand
Could hardly reach to seize the luscious fig,
Depending from it's fragrant, lowly tree,
I formed an intimacy with a maid,
The fairest sure, whose flowing, golden tresses
Were ever kissed by Zephyr's wanton breeze.
The daughter of Cydippe is the fair,
Her father is Montanus, rich in herds;
Sylvia her name: she was my young companion;
And she at present is my amorous theme.
Sylvia, the pride of woods, the flame of shepherds!
Amyntas with his Sylvia liv'd some time,
Exchanging such a pure, delightful friendship,
That the harmonious hearts of two chaste turtles
Did never beat in truer unison.
Near to each other were our cottages;
But nearer to each other were our souls;
Time had impressed us both with equal years:
But nature with more equal sentiments.
Nets was I wont to spread with her, the ambush
To catch the feathered tribe, and scaly fry;
With her I always urged the vigorous chace;
Our sport was common; common was our spoil.
But while I thus waged war with animals,
And made fell havock of the brute creation,
Love by degrees stealing me from myself,
Insensibly subdued the mighty hunter.
I found a gradual, and a new affection
Spring in my breast, as grows the blade of grass,
Advancing by degrees from source unknown.
This unaccountable augmenting passion
Made me unhappy but in Sylvia's presence;
And while I gazed upon her, from her eyes
I drank a strange, intoxicating pleasure,
Which, though transporting, left a sting behind it.
I often sighed, and wondered why I sighed;
I was a lover, ignorant of love.
Well did I know it's nature in the end:
I'll tell thee how:—Thyrsis attend my story

THYRSIS.
You paint so strongly that I must attend it.

AMYNTAS.
One day beneath the beechis spreading shade,
Phillis and Sylvia sate, and I sate with them.
When lo, a bee, that hummed around the mead,
Gathering her sweets, fastened on Phillis' cheek,
Bit it with eagerness, and sucked it's balm——
—On Phillis' cheek, vermilion as the rose;
And haply by it's view deceived, the insect,
Mistook it for some rich, ambrosial flower.
Phillis, forthwith, impatient of the puncture,
Expressed her pain in girlish lamentation.
But her consoling Sylvia thus addressed her:
"Grieve not, my Phillis; I'll remove thy smart;
"The intruder's little wound I soon will heal.
"By application of a verbal charm.
"I learned the secret from the sage Aresia;
"And in return a beauteous horn. I gave her,
"Which to the chace I bore (thou oft hast seen it)
"Ivory the substance was; 'twas set in gold."
She spoke; and straight approached her beauteous lips,
Her lips nectareous to the wounded cheek
Of Phillis, pressed them to the injured part;
And in sweet accent murmured certain verses;
But murmured them so low I could not hear them.
Astonishing effect! immediately,
The pain, and bite that caused it, were removed;
Whether by virtue of the magick words,
Or rather, as I ween, by Sylvia's lips,
Whose touch, with more than Esculapian power,
Must balsam give to body, and to soul.
I, who till then no higher bliss desired
Than to enjoy the golden privilege
Of viewing the mild lustre of her eyes,
Or hearing the sweet musick of her tongue,
Far sweeter than the murmuring rivulet,
Whose gliding stream the pebbles gently break;
More soothing than the breath of vernal Zephyr,
In whisper stealing through the trembling leaves:
———I from that moment felt a new desire,
Wishing that Sylvia's lips, and mine might meet:
And on a sudden, from a rustic boy,
Grown to a politician (strange! how love
Whets the blunt intellect!) I soon bethought me
Of a sly stratagem to gain my purpose.
An angry bee, enraged, as I pretended,
Because with heedless hand I drove it from me,
Had on my lip a thrilling wound inflicted.
Keen agony I feigned, and sore lamented;
And with a supplicating aspect begged
The favour, which my tongue durst not petition.
The simple Sylvia took compassion on me,
And offered me her efficacious cure.
But when I felt her rosy mouth touch mine,
Heavens! how it penetrated all my frame!
It smote each nerve with instantaneous fire,
Deepened my real wound, and made it mortal.
Assiduous bee never such honey sipped,
As I from Sylvia's blooming lips inhaled,
More aromatick than the new-blown rose.
And yet the kiss was languid; maiden instinct
Prevented Sylvia from impressing it;
And I with awe was overwhelmed, and durst not
Complete it with the energy of love.
That memorable kiss conveyed such sweets,
Though mixed with lurking poison to my heart,
That I kept up the fraud; and oft told Sylvia,
Her magick had not its effect on me;
And she repeated oft the pleasing charm.
Augmenting daily from that fatal time,
My passion grew at length so violent,
And so impatient my anxiety,
They tore my breast, and forced me to reveal them.
Once when the shepherds, and the nymphs were met,
For evening relaxation, at the pastime,
In which each member of the merry circle
Whispers his secret in his neighbour's ear;
My cruel fair was seated next to me.
I whispered her,—"Sylvia, I burn for thee;
Favour thy lover's passion, or he dies."
She to the ground her beauteous face declined,
Suffused with sudden red, the mark of shame,
And anger: silence was her sole rejoinder;
It was a sullen, agitated silence,
On which severe reproofs, and dreadful threats
Sate lowering. She arose, and left the play;
And hath not from that time vouchsafed to see me.
Now three times hath the sweating reaper shorn
From the luxuriant fields the golden grain;
Three times departing autumn hath announced
With falling leaves the bleak approach of winter,
While to appease that unforgiving maid,
Each art, each effort have I tried, but death.
And willingly I'd die, would but my death
Either excite her pleasure, or her grief——
But which emotion should I wish to raise?
'Twould be but grateful in her to embalm
The memory of her constant swain with grief.
And yet I would not wish with sharp sensation
To sting, and harrass her soft, snowy breast;
Or dim, with tears, the lustre of her eye.

THYRSIS.
And is it possible that if she heard
These generous words she would not pity thee;
And pity is an avenue to love.

AMYNTAS.
I dare not hope she would; for now her ear
Is as insensible to my complaint
As is the adder's to the charms of musick.

THYRSIS.
Fear not, Amyntas; I will undertake
To soften thy obdurate fair-one's rigour,
And make her more propitious to thy suit.

AYMNTAS.
Alas! my friend, too well I know her nature;
Thy kind endeavours nothing will avail:
Or if they should obtain her patient ear,
Her heart will still be inaccessible.

THYRSIS.
Why art thou thus a prey to black despair?

AMYNTAS.
I have but too just reason to despair,
For Mopsus prophesied my hapless love:
Mopsus, endowed with more than mortal wisdom;
The language of the birds to him is known,
He knows the latent powers of plants, and springs.

THYRSIS.
What Mopsus dost thou mean? that artful Mopsus,
Whose tongue is honeyed with endearing words;
On whose false lips sits an inviting smile;
Mopsus, who cloaks the murderer with the friend?
For all the idle, dismal prophecies,
With which he terrifies unwary minds,
Uttering them with authoritative air,
As if they carried fate, are ne'er fulfilled.
Experience warrants me to paint him thus:
Therefore again I say, be of good courage;
For I believe your flame will be successful,
From his malicious, and blind augury.

AMYNTAS.
If by experience, Thyrsis, thou art taught
To give no credit to his prophecies,
An instance would afford me consolation.

THYRSIS.
A memorable instance will I give thee.
[1]When fortune brought me to our peaceful shades,
I soon became acquainted with this Mopsus;
And then I judged him such as thou hast thought him,
Wise, and sincere, and friendly I believed him.
It so fell out, that I was called by business,
And urged by rustick curiosity,
To visit that great city where the Po,
Immortalized by bards, his tribute pours.
Before I undertook this enterprize,
High enterprize to simple, fearful swain,
To Mopsus I unfolded my design,
As to a faithful counsellor, and prophet.
He shook his head, and said-Beware, my son,
And tread with cautious step the dangerous ground,
Whither thou tendest: 'tis beset with snares.
The merchant there will lie in wait for thee;
Tempt thee with the false lustre of his ware,
Rob thee with smiles of generosity,
With all the paltry eloquence of trade,
And tell a thousand lies to gain a farthing:
The courtier, too depraved in soul to feel
Humane enjoyment at the sight of nature,
Will make a sport of thee, thy coarse attire,
Thy simple manners, thy unpolished language,
Thy happy ignorance of perverted life;
His mean servility, his rampant bow,
His trembling at a creature like himself,
His childish passions, his ideal wants,
Ten thousand times more worthy to be laughed at.
Guide then thy steps, my son, with circumspection:
Avoid the lumber, the parade of grandeur;
Let not thy mind be dazzled with the glare.
Fly from the Tyrian glow that mocks the eye;
The plume as airy as the head that wears it;
The lying blazon, falsely speaking worth;
The monument of long-departed greatness.
Fly all the vain idolaters of fashion;
Their souls as trifling as the modes they worship.
But above all, withold thy prudent step
From the grand magazine of earthly folly.
What place is that, said I?—There, he replied,
Female magicians dwell; who with false lights
Delude the eye, and with false sounds the ear.
Their diamond is rude stone, their gold but brass:
Their silver coffers full of orient treasure,
Are wicker baskets, and replete with trash.
With art of sorcery the walls are formed;
Strangely they speak, and answer to the speaker;
Not giving back the mutilated word,
As echo answers in the rural shade;
But fully they return it; and they add,
(Surprizing to relate!) words of their own.
The tables, and the chairs, the beds, and curtains,
All implements of that inchanted palace,
Articulate, and speak with restless tongue.
There, lies, in shape of little playful children,
Hover, and sport, inspiring ticked tales:
Nay; if a person, speechless from the womb,
Should chance to enter there, his organ straight
Would by the devilish magick be unloosed;
Spite of himself, he'd in a moment catch
The voluble infection of the place.
But these are the least evils thou may'st meet:
Thou may'st of human figure be deprived;
May’st pass into a melancholy willow,
Into à plaintive stream, or sighing flame.
Such was the lesson gloomy Mopsus gave me.
I to the city went, not without fear,
My fancy haunted by his dreadful picture,
Which better information soon effaced.
Kind Providence my wandering steps conducted
To the blest mansion of terrestrial sweets,
Which he had drawn in such alarming colours.
Forth from the palace issued heavenly musick,
The voice of swains, melodious nymphs, and Sirens;
And such a tide of captivating bliss,
That for a while I stood, absorbed in wonder.
A goodly person at the door I spied,
He seemed the guardian of the paradise;
Graceful his shape, and noble was his mien:
I knew not, from his ensigns, what to deem him,
A warriour brave, or courtly cavalier.
With face benign, tempering his dignity,
Accosting me, he begged that I would enter,
Survey the mansion, and partake it's pleasures.
Thus he, among the first in rank and splendor,
Was pleased to honour an ignoble swain.
Enter I did—but heavens! what sights I saw!
I saw musicians with Orphean finger
Striking the lyre: a company I saw
Of heavenly goddesses, and beauteous nymphs;
Some in luxuriant, airy dress; their hair,
And face uncumbered with fantastick mode;
Bright as Aurora, harbinger of day,
Diffusing virgin light, and pearly dew.
Apollo and the Muses there I saw,
With heavenly sounds enchanting mortal ear;
Raising the coldest hearer to a poet,
And opening all the sentimental world.
Amongst the Muses was Elpinus seated,
Elpinus high in fame amongst our swains.
With such pervading, and parental eye
Omniscient Heaven the worthy man surveys,
In the sequestered shade and humble garb;
And raises to such unexpected honour
The modest friend of virtue, and the Muse.
Spurning my rustick diffidence, to think
The fortune of Elpinus might be mine,
And waked to rapture I had never known,
My fancy heated with surrounding objects,
I raised my voice, and sung of war and heroes,
My former unaspiring themes disdaining,
The shepherds humble, and unpolished lay.
And though it was my fate to seek again
These woods; yet still my pipe retains a part
Of the bold character which then I caught;
It sounds not weak, but with a martial tone,
And makes the astonished woods, and valleys ring.
The envious Mopsus heard my epic strain,
And viewed me with malign, bewitching eye:
With hoarseness I was smit; and, for a time,
I could not speak; the neighbouring shepherds thought
A wolf had seen me; but the wolf was he.
So much I've told thee, that thou mayst not fear
To have such fate as he predicted thee:
Instead of robbery and ridicule,
I, at the famous city, met with honours,
And I returned enriched with sacred genius.
Mopsusis heart is black; whence every object
Wears a grim hue to his distempered soul.
And though his warning in the main was just,
And holds too ftrongly in exalted life;
He was not seer enough to know the court
To which I went, was an exception to it.
In general, what he prophecies is false:
Hope then; and give his prophecy to thee,
A happy, and inverted explanation.

AMYNTAS.
Thyrsis, thy words give comfort to my soul;
Be thou the generous guardian of my life.

THYRSIS.
I'll not neglect the charge, I'll urge thy interest:
Fail not to meet me here within an hour.
Mean while, the duty of a man revolve,
And steel thy bosom with the firm resolve,
Not to resign thyself a dupe to fear,
By giving scope to fancy's wild career.
For oh! Amyntas! when misguided man
Departs from reason's all-sufficient plan,
To happiness in vain presumes to tend,
By means that do not on himself depend;
Crosses attack him in a numerous train,
And all the family of moral pain.
Yet this but theory; I do not mean
From it's deep-rooted love thy heart to wean;
Love still must actuate the sequestered swain,
His highest pleasure, and acutest pain;
Or else a mere machine he'd draw his breath,
In dull indifference, in a living death.
But in thy breast let reason have her share;
A tempered passion gives a tempered care.
When reason's gentle government we quit,
Too warmly with an earthly object smit;
Blindly we're driven by passions furious sway,
The heddy mind is every trifle's play;
Each little circumstance our fear awakes,
Which reason in its just proportion takes.
Thus does the shepherd, blest with vigorous eyes,
See objects in their proper form, and size:
But if distemper hath impaired his sight,
Bright Sol directs him with fallacious light;
He sees a robber in the rustling spray,
And for a wolf mistakes his faithful Tray.

CHORUS.
Simple and happy age of gold! thy praise
We make not now the subject of our lays;
Because when the young world was blessed with thee,
Milk flowed in streams, and honey from the tree.
We praise thee not, that earth her fruits, and grain
Bestowed without the labour of the swain:
That never heedless boy the serpent stung,
Never o'er melancholy mortals hung
The gloomy cloud; but Æther, ever clear,
And Zephyr, gave an equal, smiling year:
No rude extremes the world primæval knew;
Nor Sirius scorched, nor wintry Boreas blew.
Contending nations had not learned to jar,
No fleet from shoar to shoar transported war;
Nor yet had commerce wafted o'er the seas
As certain death, imbittered by disease.
These blessings only to that age belong;
Yet not for them we raise our simple song:
For other bliss that age we chiefly prize;
Mistaken mortals, hear it, and be wise.
As yet audacious Honour had not birth;
The tyrant-phantom was not known on earth;
Honour, a pompous, unsubstantial name,
That fills with lies the sounding trump of Fame;
That bids an honest poor man be a slave,
And to a deity erects a knave;
Confounds the characters by Jove assigned,
And contradicts the great, eternal Mind.
In early times, we modestly desired
Just what the genuine frame of man required;
How could we then this idol's rule obey,
How be tormented with his Gothick sway?
Homage to no superior then we owed,
Life's innocence in equal tenour flowed;
No chain of thought disturbed the vacant race,
Oppression sate not pensive on the face;
Nor was the breast by fell ambition torn;
They never for a rose mistoke a thorn:
They never trembled with preposterous awe;
Unerring nature was their only law;
And all her rights she had with easy claim,
For they, and inclination were the same.
Without the torch, and bow, like rustick boys,
(Heaven deigned to mingle then with earthly joys)
The little Loves the festal dance would lead,
With nymphs, and shepherds, on the flowery mead:
While purling streams, and warblers from the spray,
To fuller concert raised the rural lay.
On the soft bank, or through the shady grove,
The simple pair would open all their love;
Perhaps a thought, more ardent than the rest,
Would in a breathing whisper be expressed;
At length the burning kiss, the amorous toy,
Love's playful preludes, brought completer joy.
The virgin’s growing breast was then unveiled;
For no false fear that artless breast assailed:
And, bold through innocence, the naked maid
Oft in the river with her shepherd played:
'Tis Honour, which in these flagitious times
Blasphemes the deeds of nature into crimes.
Thou, Honour, first, stern foe to human kind,
Didst check the generous current of the mind;
Didst bid the maid consume with hidden fire,
And tremble to indulge innate desire;
To formal deadness didst the eye controul,
And kill the beam by which we see the soul.
No more the graceful negligence is seen;
The feeling being is a flat machine.
Where is love's gay disport? the frolick play,
Chacing the winter's eve, and summer's day?
Where are the flowing locks of beauteous hair,
Sweetly disordered by the wanton air?
The flowing locks are in a net confined,
Sad emblem of the fair-one's fettered mind.
Our words, our steps the school of honour guides,
And folemn folly o'er our life presides.
The golden days of liberty are o'er,
We steal the bliss, which was a gift before.
These, Honour, are the boons thy laws confer;
By thee we suffer, for by thee we err.
But hence to busy life; we cannot bear
Thy cumbrous grandeur, and thy dazzling glare:
O'er courts, and cities, thou wast meant to reign;
They seek thy guilt; and let them feel thy pain.
Hence to the great, nor from thy empire stray;
Let old Simplicity the simple sway.
Let us make most of time, love, sport and sing;
For fleeting time is ever on the wing.
Each evening Phœbus quits the sky, and laves
His golden tresses in the western waves:
He sets to beam again with orient ray,
With new-born vigour to restore the day:
But at the fatal close of life's career,
We leave for ever the terrestrial sphere;
Sink to a dark irremeable shoar;
We set on Styxis strand, and rise no more.

End of the First Act.

  1. I hope the reader will excuse the length, and local allusion of this speech, and forgive the translator for not shortening, and altering it; as there is not another like it in the whole poem. Thyrsis indeed pays a compliment again to the duke of Ferrara, in the second scene of the second act; but it is very short in comparison; the hint is there given by Virgil's
    O Mellibee, deus nobis hæc otia fecit.
    It must be allowed that Tasso, in general, in this poem, speaks to the universal feelings of mankind; an essential, and indispensable rule in poetry.