Like plunder, upon every strand they prey.
With frigate and with galley wont to roam,
And other sort of barks they range the sea,
And, as a solace to their martyrdom,
From far, or from their isle’s vicinity,
Bear women off; with open rapine some,
These bought by gold, and those by flattery:
And, plundered from the different lands they scower,
Crowd with their captives dungeon-cell and tower.
Keeping that region close aboard, to explore
The island’s lonely bank, a gallery creeps;
Where, amid stubs upon the grassy shore,
Angelica, unhappy damsel, sleeps.
To wood and water there the sailor’s moor,
And from the bark, for this, a party leaps;
And there that matchless flower of earthly charms
Discovers in the holy father’s arms.
Oh! prize too dear, oh! too illustrious prey!
To glut so barbarous and so base a foe!
Oh! cruel Fortune! who believed thy sway
Was of such passing power in things below?
That thou shouldst make a hideous monster’s prey
The beauty, for which Agrican did glow,
Brought with half Scythia’s people from the gates
Of Caucasus,119 in Ind, to find their fates.
The beauty, by Circassian Sacripant
Preferred before his honour and his crown,
The beauty which made Roland, Brava’s vaunt,
Sully his wholesome judgment and renown,
The beauty which had moved the wide Levant,
And awed, and turned its kingdom upside down,
Now has not (thus deserted and unheard)
One to assist it even with a word.
Oppressed with heavy sleep upon the shore,
The lovely virgin, ere awake, they chain:
With her, the enchanter friar the pirates bore
On board their ship, a sad, afflicted train.
This done, they hoisted up their sail once more,
And the bark made the fatal isle again,
Where, till the lot shall of their prey dispose,
Her prisoned in a castle they enclose.
But such her matchless beauty’s power, the maid
Was able that fierce crew to mollify,
Who many days her cruel death delayed,
Preserved until their last necessity;
And while they damsels from without purveyed,
Spared such angelic beauty: finally,
The damsel to the monstrous orc they bring,
The people all behind her sorrowing.
Who shall relate the anguish, the lament
And outcry which against the welkin knock?
I marvel that the sea-shore was not rent,
When she was placed upon the rugged block,
Where, chained and void of help, the punishment
Of loathsome death awaits her on the rock.
This will not I, so sorrow moves me, say,
Which makes me turn my rhymes another way;
To find a verse of less lugubrious strain,
Till I my wearied spirit shall restore:
For not the squalid snake of mottled stain,
Nor wild and whelpless tiger, angered more,
Nor what of venomous, on burning plain,
Creeps ’twixt the Red and the Atlantic shore,
Could see the grisly sight, and choose but moan
The damsel bound upon the naked stone.
Oh! if this chance to her Orlando, who
Was gone to Paris-town to seek the maid,
Had been reported! or those other two,
Duped by a post, dispatched from Stygian shade,
They would have tracked her heavenly footsteps through
A thousand deaths, to bear the damsel aid.
But had the warriors of her peril known,
So far removed, for what would that have done?
This while round Paris-walls the leaguer lay
Of famed Troyano’s son’s besieging band,
Reduced to such extremity one day,
That it nigh fell into the foeman’s hand;
And, but that vows had virtue to allay
The wrath of Heaven, whose waters drenched the land,
That day had perished by the Moorish lance
The holy empire and great name of France.
To the just plaint of aged Charlemagne
The great Creator turned his eyes, and stayed
The conflagration with a sudden rain,
Which haply human art had not allayed.
Wise whosoever seeketh, not in vain,
His help, than whose there is no better aid!
Well the religious king, to whom ’twas given,
Knew that the saving succour was from Heaven.
All night long counsel of his weary bed,
Vexed with a ceaseless care, Orlando sought;
Now here, now there, the restless fancy sped,
Now turned, now seized, but never held the thought:
As when, from sun or nightly planet shed,
Clear water has the quivering radiance caught,
The flashes through the spacious mansion fly,
With reaching leap, right, left, and low, and high.120
To memory now returned his lady gay,
She rather ne’er was banished from his breast;
And fanned the secret fire, which through the day
(Now kindled into flame) had seemed at rest;
That in his escort even from Catày
Or farthest Ind, had journeyed to the west;
There lost: Of whom he had discerned no token
Since Charles’s power near Bordeaux-town was broken.
This in Orlando moved great grief, and he
Lay thinking on his folly past in vain:
“My heart,” he said, “oh! how unworthily
I bore myself! and out, alas! what pain,
(When night and day I might have dwelt with thee,
Since this thou didst not in thy grace disdain,)
To have let them place thee in old Namus’ hand!
Witless a wrong so crying to withstand.
“Might I not have excused myself?—The king
Had not perchance gainsaid my better right—
Of if he had gainsaid my reasoning,
Who would have taken thee in my despite?
Why not have armed, and rather let them wring
My heart out of my breast? But not the might
Of Charles or all his host, had they been tried,
Could have availed to tear thee from my side.
“Oh! had he placed her but in strong repair,
Guarded in some good fort, or Paris-town!
—Since he would trust her to Duke Namus’ care,
That he should lose her in this way, alone
Sorts with my wish.—Who would have kept the fair
Like me, that would for her to death have gone?
Have kept her better than my heart or sight:
Who should and could, yet did not what I might.
“Without me, my sweet life, beshrew me, where
Art thou bestowed, so
