No More Learning

XXXV
" `It 'twas thy pleasure, Love, to have me shent,
Because by glad estate thine anger stirred,
Thou with some torture might'st have been content
On other lovers used; but never word
Have I found written of a female bent
On love of female, mid mankind or herd.
Woman to woman's beauty still is blind;
Nor ewe delights in ewe, nor hind in hind.

XXXVI
" `Tis only I, on earth, in air, or sea,
Who suffer at thy hands such cruel pain;
And this thou hast ordained, that I may be
The first and last example in thy reign.
Foully did Ninus' wife and impiously
For her own son a passion entertain;
Loved was Pasiphae's bull and Myrrha's sire;
But mine is madder than their worst desire.

XXXVII
" `Here female upon male had set her will;
Had hope; and, as I hear, was satisfied.
Pasiphae the wooden cow did fill:
Others, in other mode, their want supplied.
But, had he flown to me, -- with all his skill,
Dan Daedalus had not the noose untied:
For one too diligent hath wreathed these strings;
Even Nature's self, the puissantest of things. '

XXXVIII
"So grieves the maid, so goads herself and wears,
And shows no haste her sorrowing to forego;
Sometimes her face, sometimes her tresses tears,
And levels at herself the vengeful blow.
In pity, Bradamant the sorrow shares,
And is constrained to hear the tale of woe,
She studies to divert, with fruitless pain,
The strange and mad desire; but speaks in vain.

XXXIX
"She, who requires assistance, not support,
Still more laments herself, with grief opprest.
By this the waning day was growing short,
For the low sun was crimsoning the west;
A fitting hour for those to seek a port,
Who would not in the wood set up their rest.
When to this city, near her sylvan haunt,
Young Flordespine invited Bradament.

XL
"My sister the request could ill deny;
And so they came together to the place,
Where, but for you, by that ill squadron I
Had been compelled the cruel flame to face:
There Flordespina made her family
Caress and do my sister no small grace;
And, having in a female robe arraid,
Past her on all beholders for a maid.

XLI
"Because perceiving vantage there was none
In the male cheer by which she was misled,
The damsel held it wise, reproach to shun,
Which might by any carping tongue be said.
And this the rather: that the ill, which one
Of the two garments in her mind had bred,
Now with the other which revealed the cheat,
She would assay to drive from her conceit.
XLII
"The ladies share one common bed that night,
Their bed the same, but different their repose.
One sleeps, one groans and weeps in piteous plight,
Because her wild desire more fiercely glows;
And on her wearied eyes should slumber light,
All is deceitful that brief slumber shows.
To her it seems, as if relenting Heaven
A better sex to Bradamant is given.

XLIII
"As the sick man with burning thirst distrest,
If he should sleep, -- ere he that wish fulfil, --
Aye in his troubled, interrupted rest,
Remembers him of every once-seen rill:
So is the damsel's fancy still possest,
In sleep, with images which glad her will.
Then from the empty dreams which crowd her brain,
She wakes, and, waking, finds the vision vain.

XLIV
"What vows she vowed, how oft that night she prayed,
To all her gods and Mahound, in despair!
-- That they, by open miracle, the maid
Would change, and give her other sex to wear.
But all the lady's vows were ill appaid,
And haply Heaven as well might mock the prayer;
Night fades, and Phoebus raises from the main
His yellow head, and lights the world again.

XLV
"On issueing from their bed when day is broken,
The wretched Flordespina's woes augment:
For of departing Bradamant had spoken,
Anxious to scape from that embarrassment.
The princess a prime jennet, as a token,
Forced on my parting sister, when she went;
And gilded housings, and a surcoat brave,
Which her own hand had richly broidered, gave.

XLVI
"Her Flordespine accompanied some way,
Then, weeping, to her castle made return.
So fast my sister pricked, she reached that day
Mount Alban; we who for her absence mourn,
Mother and brother, greet the martial may,
And her arrival with much joy discern:
For hearing nought, we feared that she was dead,
And had remained in cruel doubt and dread.

XLVII
"Unhelmed, we wondered at her hair, which passed
In braids about her brow, she whilom wore;
Nor less we wondered at the foreign cast
Of the embroidered surcoat which she wore:
And she to us rehearsed, from first to last,
The story I was telling you before;
How she was wounded in the wood, and how,
For cure, were shorn the tresses from her brow;

XLVIII
"And next how came on her, with labour spent,
-- As by the stream she slept -- that huntress bright;
And how, with all her false semblance well content,
She from the train withdrew her out of sight.
Nor left she any thing of her lament
Untold; which touched with pity every wight;
Told how the maid had harboured her, and all
Which past, till she revisited her Hall.

XLIX
"Of Flordespine I knew: and I had seen
In Saragossa and in France the maid;
To whose bewitching eyes and lovely mien
My youthful appetite had often strayed:
Yet her I would not make my fancy's queen;
For hopeless love is but a dream and shade:
Now I this proffered in such substance view,
Straitway the ancient flame breaks forth anew.

L
"Love, with this hope, constructs his subtle ties;
Who other threads for me would vainly weave.