No More Learning

And, when assured that he is there alone,
Gives utterance to his grief in shriek and groan.

CXXV
Never from tears, never from sorrowing,
He paused; nor found he peace by night and day:
He fled from town, in forest harbouring,
And in the open air on hard earth lay.
He marvelled at himself, how such a spring
Of water from his eyes could stream away,
And breath was for so many sobs supplied;
And thus ofttimes, amid his mourning, cried.

CXXVI
"These are no longer real tears which rise,
And which I scatter from so full a vein.
Of tears my ceaseless sorrow lacked supplies;
They stopt when to mid-height scarce rose my pain.
The vital moisture rushing to my eyes,
Driven by the fire within me, now would gain
A vent; and it is this which I expend,
And which my sorrows and my life will end.

CXXVII
"No; these, which are the index of my woes,
These are not sighs, nor sighs are such; they fail
At times, and have their season of repose:
I feel, my breast can never less exhale
Its sorrow: Love, who with his pinions blows
The fire about my heart, creates this gale.
Love, by what miracle does thou contrive,
It wastes not in the fire thou keep'st alive?

CXXVIII
"I am not -- am not what I seem to sight:
What Roland was is dead and under ground,
Slain by that most ungrateful lady's spite,
Whose faithlessness inflicted such a wound.
Divided from the flesh, I am his sprite,
Which in this hell, tormented, walks its round,
To be, but in its shadow left above,
A warning to all such as thrust in love. "

CXXIX
All night about the forest roved the count,
And, at the break of daily light, was brought
By his unhappy fortune to the fount,
Where his inscription young Medoro wrought.
To see his wrongs inscribed upon that mount,
Inflamed his fury so, in him was nought
But turned to hatred, phrensy, rage, and spite;
Nor paused he more, but bared his faulchion bright;

CXXX
Cleft through the writing; and the solid block,
Into the sky, in tiny fragments sped.
Wo worth each sapling and the caverned rock,
Where Medore and Angelica were read!
So scathed, that they to shepherd or to flock
Thenceforth shall never furnish shade or bed.
And that sweet fountain, late so clear and pure,
From such tempestuous wrath was ill secure.
CXXXI
For he turf, stone, and trunk, and shoot, and lop,
Cast without cease into the beauteous source;
Till, turbid from the bottom to the top,
Never again was clear the troubled course.
At length, for lack of breath, compelled to stop,
(When he is bathed in sweat, and wasted force,
Serves not his fury more) he falls, and lies
Upon the mead, and, gazing upward, sighs.

CXXXII
Wearied and woe-begone, he fell to ground,
And turned his eyes toward heaven; nor spake he aught.
Nor ate, nor slept, till in his daily round
The golden sun had broken thrice, and sought
His rest anew; nor ever ceased his wound
To rankle, till it marred his sober thought.
At length, impelled by phrensy, the fourth day,
He from his limbs tore plate and mail away.

CXXXIII
Here was his helmet, there his shield bestowed;
His arms far off; and, farther than the rest,
His cuirass; through the greenwood wide was strowed
All his good gear, in fine; and next his vest
He rent; and, in his fury, naked showed
His shaggy paunch, and all his back and breast.
And 'gan that phrensy act, so passing dread,
Of stranger folly never shall be said.

CXXXIV
So fierce his rage, so fierce his fury grew,
That all obscured remained the warrior's sprite;
Nor, for forgetfulness, his sword he drew,
Or wonderous deeds, I trow, had wrought the knight:
But neither this, nor bill, nor axe to hew,
Was needed by Orlando's peerless might.
He of his prowess gave high proofs and full,
Who a tall pine uprooted at a pull.

CXXXV
He many others, with as little let
As fennel, wall-wort-stem, or dill, up-tore;
And ilex, knotted oak, and fir upset,
And beech, and mountain-ash, and elm-tree hoar.
He did what fowler, ere he spreads his net,
Does, to prepare the champaigne for his lore,
By stubble, rush, and nettle-stalk; and broke,
Like these, old sturdy trees and stems of oak.

CXXXVI
The shepherd swains, who hear the tumult nigh,
Leaving their flocks beneath the greenwood tree,
Some here some there across the forest hie,
And hurry thither, all, the cause to see.
-- But I have reached such point, my history,
If I o'erpass this bound, may irksome be;
And I my story will delay to end,
Rather than by my tediousness offend.


CANTO 24

ARGUMENT
Odorico's and Gabrina's guilt repaid,
Youthful Zerbino sets at large the train;
He in defence of good Orlando's blade,
Is afterwards by Mandricardo slain.
Isabel weeps; by Rodomont is made
War on the Tartar king, and truce again,
To succour Agramant and his array;
Who to the lilies are well-nigh a prey.


I
Let him make haste his feet to disengage,
Nor lime his wings, whom Love has made a prize;
For love, in fine, is nought but phrensied rage,
By universal suffrage of the wise:
And albeit some may show themselves more sage
Than Roland, they but sin in other guise.