Through whom thy land, reposing, casts away
All haste, and wholly leans to kind accord,
Prythee delay not to declare, that I
In this my story haply tell no lie.
Meanwhile his eyes the good Orlando reared,
And saw, on turning them to seaward, where
Under full sail a nimble bark appeared,
As if she to that island would repair.
I will not now rehearse who thither steered;
For more than one awaiteth me elsewhere.
Wend me to France and see if they be glad
At having chased the Saracens, or sad;
See what she does withal, the lady true,
That sees her knight content to wend so wide;
Of the afflicted Bradamant I shew;
After she saw the oath was nullified,
Made in the hearing of those armies two,
Upon the Christian and the paynim side;
Since he again had failed her, there was nought
Wherein she could confide, the damsel thought.
And now her too accustomed plaint and wail
Repeating, of Rogero’s cruelty
Fair Bradamant renewed the wonted tale;
She cursed her hard and evil destiny;
Then loosening to tempestuous grief the sail,
Heaven that consented to such perjury,
—And did not yet by some plain token speak—
She, in her passion, called unjust and weak.
The sage Melissa she accused, and cursed
The oracle of the cavern, through whose lie
She in that sea of love herself immersed,
Upon whose waters she embarked to die.
She to Marphisa afterwards rehearsed
Her woes, and told her brother’s perfidy;
She chides, pours forth her sorrows, and demands,
With tears and outcries, succour at her hands.
Marphisa shrugs her shoulders; what alone
She can, she offers—comfort to the fair;
“Nor thinks Rogero her has so foregone
But what to her he shortly will repair.
And, should he not, such outrage to be done,
The damsel plights her promise not to bear;
Twixt her and him shall deadly war be waged,
Or he shall keep the word, which he engaged.”
She makes her somewhat thus her grief restrain;
Which having vent in some sort spend its gall,
Now we have seen the damsel in her pain
Rogero impious, proud, and perjured call,
See we, if in a happier state remain
The brother of that gentle maid withal;
Whose flesh, bones, nerves, and sinews are a prey
To burning love; Rinaldo I would say.
I say Rinaldo that (as known to you)
Angelica the beauteous loved so well:
Nor him into the amorous fillets drew
So much her beauty as the magic spell.
In peace reposed those other barons true;
For wholly broken was the infidel:
Alone amid the victors, he, of all
The paladins, remained Love’s captive thrall.
To seek her he a hundred couriers sent,
And sought as well, himself, the missing maid:
He in the end to Malagigi went,
Who in his need had often given him aid:
To him he told his love, with eyelids bent
On earth, and visage crimsoned o’er; and prayed
That sage magicians to instruct him, where
He in the world might find the long-sought fair.
A case, so strange and wondrous, marvel sore
In friendly Malagigi’s bosom bred:
The wizard knew, a hundred times and more,
He might have had the damsel in his bed;
And he himself, to move the knight or yore,
In her behalf, enough had done and said:
Had him by prayer and menace sought to bend,
Yet ne’er was able to obtain his end;
And so much more, that out of prison-ward
He then would Malagigi so have brought.500
Now will he seek her, of his own accord,
On less occasion, when it profits nought.
Next that magician Montalbano’s lord
To mark how sorely do had erred, besought:
Since little lacked, but through the boon denied,
Erewhile he had in gloomy dungeon died.
But how much more Rinaldo’s strange demand
Sounded importunately in his ear,
So by sure index Malagigi scanned,
That so much was Angelica more dear.
Rinaldo prayer unable to withstand,
In ocean sunk the wizard cavalier
All memory of old injury assayed,
And bowned himself to give the warrior aid.
For his reply he craved some small delay,
And with fair hope consoled Mount Alban’s knight,
“He should be able of the road to say
By which Angelica had sped her flight,
In France or wheresoe’er;” then wends his way
Thither where he is wont his imps to cite;
A grot impervious and with mountains walled:
His book he opened and the spirits called.
Then one he chooses, in love-cases read,
Whom Malagigi to declare requires,
How good Rinaldo’s heart, before so died,
Was now so quickly moved by soft desires;
And “of those fountains twain (the demon said)
Whereof one lights, one quenches amorous fires;
And how nought cures the mischief caused by one
But that whose streams in counter current run;”
And says; “Rinaldo, having drunk whilere
From the love-chasing fountain’s mossy urn,
To Angelica, that long had wooed the peer,
Had shown himself so obstinate and stern;
And he, whom after his ill star did steer
To drink of that which makes the bosom burn,
Her whom but just before he loathed above
All reason, by that draught was forced to love.
“Him his ill star and cruel fate conveyed
To swallow fire and flame i’ the frozen lake:
For nigh at the same time the Indian maid
In the other bitter stream her thirst did slake;
Which in her bosom so all love allayed,
Henceforth she loathed him more than noisome snake;
He loved her, and such love was his, as late
Rinaldo bore her enmity and hate.”
Of this strange story fully certified
Was Malagigi by the demon’s lore;
Who news as well of Angelique supplied;
“How yielding up herself to a young Moor,
With him embarking on the unstable tide,
She had abandoned Europe’s every shore;
And hoisting her bold canvas to the wind,
In Catalonian galley loosed for Ind.”
Rinaldo seeking out the sage anew
For his reply—“he would dissuade the knight
From loving more
