With her alone into that hold at last.
“When now she had her, fearless of surprise,
Safe in a solitary place, that dame,
By slow degrees, in words and amorous wise,
Showed her deep-wounded heart; with sighs of flame,
Breathed from her inmost breast, with burning eyes,
She spake her soul sick with desire; became
Now pale, now red; nor longer self-controlled,
Ravished a kiss, she waxed so passing bold.
“My sister was assured the huntress maid
Falsely conceited her a man to be;
Nor in that need could she afford her aid;
And found herself in sore perplexity.
‘ ’Tis better that I now dispel (she said)
The foolish thought she feeds, and that in me
The damsel should a gentle woman scan,
Rather than take me for a craven man.’
“And she said well: for cravenhood it were
Befitting man of straw, not warrior true,
With whom so bright a lady deigned to pair,
So wonderous sweet and full of nectarous dew,
To clack like a poor cuckoo to the fair,
Hanging his coward wing, when he should woo,
Shaping her speech to this in wary mode,
My sister ‘that she was a damsel, showed;
“ ‘That, like Camilla and like Hyppolite,
Sought fame in battle-field, and near the sea,
In Afric, in Arzilla, saw the light;
To shield and spear enured from infancy.’
A spark this quenched not; nor yet burned less bright
The enamoured damsel’s kindled phantasy.
Too tardy came the salve to ease the smart:
So deep had Love already driven his dart.
“Nor yet less fair to her my sister’s face
Appeared, less fair her ways, less fair her guise;
Nor yet the heart returned into its place,
Which joyed itself within those dear-loved eyes.
Flordespine deems the damsel’s iron case,
To her desire some hope of ease supplies,
And when she thinks she is indeed a maid,
Laments and sobs, with mighty woe downweighed.
“He who had marked her sorrow and lament,
That day, himself had sorrowed with the fair.
‘What pains (she said) did ever wight torment,
So cruel, but that mine more cruel were?
I need not to accomplish my intent,
In other love, impure or pure, despair;
The rose I well might gather from the thorn:
My longing only is of hope forlorn.
“ ‘If ’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.
“ ‘ ’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 Pasiphäe’s bull and Myrrha’s sire;
But mine is madder than their worst desire.
“ ‘Here female upon male had set her will;
Had hope; and, as I hear, was satisfied.
Pasiphäe 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.’
“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.
“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.
“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 arrayed,
Past her on all beholders for a maid.
“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.
“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.
“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.
“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.
“On issuing from their bed when day is broken,
The wretched
