Rosalind: Euphues' Golden Legacy

MONTANUS' SONNET

381A turtle sat upon a leafless tree,
_Mourning her absent fere
_With sad and sorry cheer.
_About her wondering stood
_The citizens of wood,
_And, whilst her plumes she rents
_And for her love laments,
_The stately trees complain them,
_The birds with sorrow pain them.
_Each one that doth her view
_Her pain and sorrows rue;
_But were the sorrows known
_That me hath overthrown,
Oh, how would Phoebe sigh if she did look on me!

382The lovesick Polypheme, that could not see,
_Who on the barren shore
_His fortunes doth deplore,
_And melteth all in moan
_For Galatea gone,
_And with his piteous cries
_Afflicts both earth and skies,
_And to his woe betook
_Doth break both pipe and hook,
_For whom complains the morn,
_For whom the sea-nymphs mourn,
_Alas, his pain is naught;
_For were my woe but thought,
Oh, how would Phoebe sigh if she did look on me!

383Beyond compare, my pain;
_Yet glad am I
If gentle Phoebe deign
_To see her Montan die.

384After this, Montanus felt his passions so extreme that he fell into this exclamation against the injustice of Love:

385
Helas, tyran, plein de rigueur,
Modere un peu ta violence.
Que te sert si grande depense?
C'est trop de flammes pour un coeur.
Epargnez en une etincelle,
Puis fais ton effort d'emouvoir,
La fiere qui ne veut point voir,
En quel feu je brule pour elle.
Execute, Amour, ce dessein,
Et rabaisse un peu son audace.
Son coeur ne doit etre de glace,
Bien qu'elle ait de neige le sein.

386Montanus ended his sonnet with such a volley of sighs and such a stream of tears as might have moved any but Phoebe to have granted him favor. But she, measuring all his passions with a coy disdain and triumphing in the poor shepherd's pathetical humors, smiling at his martyrdom as though love had been no malady, scornfully warbled out this sonnet: