No More Learning

The vision cries: "Why vex yourself, and deem
Things real which are hollow and untrue?
Backwards shall sooner flow the mountainstream
Than I to other turn my thought from you.
When you I love not, then unloved by me
This heart, these apples of mine eyes, will be.

LXI
"Hither have I repaired (it seemed he said)
To be baptized and do as I professed.
If I have lingered, I have been delaid,
By other wound than that of Love opprest. "
With that he vanished from the martial maid,
And with the vision broken was her rest.
New floods of tears the awakened damsel shed,
And to herself in this sad fashion said:

LXII
"What pleased was but a dream; alas! a sheer
Reality is this my waking bane;
My joy a dream and prompt to disappear,
No dream my cruel and tormenting pain.
Ah! wherefore what I seemed to see and hear,
Cannot I, waking, see and hear again?
What ails ye, wretched eyes, that closed ye show
Unreal good, and open but on woe?

LXIII
"Sweet sleep with promised peace my soul did buoy,
But I to bitter warfare wake anew;
Sweet sleep but brought with it fallacious joy,
But -- sure and bitter -- waking ills ensue.
If falsehood so delight and truth annoy,
Never more may I see or hear what's true!
If sleeping brings me weal, and watching woe,
The pains of waking may I never know!

LXIV
"Blest animals that sleep through half the year,
Nor ope your heavy eyelids, night nor day!
For if such tedious sleep like death appear,
Such watching is like life, I will not say,
Since -- such my lot, beyond all wont, severe --
I death in watching, life in sleep assay.
But oh! if death such sleep resemble, Death,
Even now I pray three stop my fleeting breath! "

LXV
The clouds were gone, the horizon overspread
With glowing crimson by the new-born sun,
And in these signs, unlike the past, was read
A better promise of the day begun:
When Bradamant upstarted from her bed,
And armed her for the journey to be done,
Her thanks first rendered to the courteous lord,
For his kind of cheer and hospitable board.

LXVI
And found, the lady messenger, with maid
And squire, had issued from the castled hold,
And was a-field, where her arrival stayed
Those three good warriors, those the damsel bold
The eve before had on the champaign laid,
Cast from their horses by her lance of gold;
And who had suffered, to their mighty pain,
All night, the freezing wind and pattering rain.

LXVII
Add to such ill, that, hungering sore for food,
They and their horses, through the livelong night,
Trampling the mire, with chattering teeth, had stood:
But (what well-nigh engendered more despite
-- Say not well nigh -- more moved the warrior's mood)
Was that they knew the damsel would recite
How they had been unhorsed by hostile lance
In the first course which they had run in France;

LXVIII
And -- each resolved to die or else his name
Forthwith in new encounter to retrieve --
That Ulany, the message-bearing dame,
(Whose style no longer I unmentioned leave),
A fairer notion of their knightly fame
Than heretofore, might haply now conceive,
Bold Bradamant anew to fight defied,
When of the drawbridge clear they her descried;

LXIX
Not thinking, howsoe'er, she was a maid,
Who in no look or act the maid confest;
Duke Aymon's daughter, loth to be delaid,
Refuses, as a traveller that is pressed.
But they so often and so sorely prayed,
That she could ill refuse the kings' request.
Her lance she levels, at three strokes extends
All three on earth, and thus the warfare ends:

LXX
For Bradamant no more her courser wheeled,
But turned her back upon the foes o'erthrown.
They, that intent to gain the golden shield,
Had sought a land so distant from their own,
Rising in sullen silence from the field
(For speech with all their hardihood was gone)
Appeared as stupefied by their surprise,
Nor to Ulania dared to lift their eyes.

LXXI
For they, as thither they their course addrest,
Had vaunted to the maid in boasting vein,
No paladin or knight with lance in rest,
Against the worst his saddle could maintain.
To make them vail yet more their haughty crest,
And look upon the world with less disdain,
She tells them, by no paladin or peer
Were they unhorsed, but by a woman's spear.

LXXII
"Now what of Roland's and Rinaldo's might,
Not without reason held in such renown,
Ought you to think (she said) when thus in fight
Ye by a female hand are overthrown?
Say, if the buckler one of these requite,
-- Better than by a woman ye have done,
Will ye by those redoubted warriors do?
So think not I, nor haply think so you.

LXXIII
"This may suffice you all; and need in none
A clearer proof of prowess to display;
And who desires, if rashly any one
Desires, again his valour to assay,
Would add but scathe to shame, now made his own;
Now; and the same to-day as yesterday.
Unless perchance he thinks it praise and gain,
By such illustrious warriors to be slain.