Escarpin. 
Well, I doubt that your prescription
Is the best:  for fair recluses,
Whose sublime pursuits, restricted
To celestial things, make even
The most innocent thought seem wicked,
Are by no means likely persons
To divert a man afflicted
With this melancholy madness: 
Better take him into the thickest
Throng of Rome, there flesh and bone
Goddesses he ’ll find, and fitter.—­

Claudius. 
Ah! you speak but as the vulgar: 
Is it not the bliss of blisses
To adore some lovely being
In the ideal, in the distance,
Almost as a vision?—­

Escarpin. 
                     Yes;
’T is delightful; I admit it,
But there ’s good and better:  think
Of the choice that once a simple
Mother gave her son:  she said: 
“Egg or rasher, which will I give thee?”
And he said:  “The rasher, mother,
But with the egg upon it, prithee”. 
“Both are best”, so says the proverb.

Claudius. 
Well, if tastes did n’t sometimes differ,
What a notable mistake
Providence would have committed! 
To adore thee, sweetest Cynthia, [aside
Is the height of all my wishes: 
As it well may be, for am I
Worthy, worship even to give her? [Exeunt.

Scene the second
A Wood near Rome.

(Enter Nisida and Chloris, the latter with a lyre).

Nisida. 
Have you brought the instrument?

Chloris. 
Yes.

Nisida. 
      Then give it me, for here
In this tranquil forest sphere,
Where the boughs and blossoms blent,
Ruby blooms and emerald stems,
Round about their radiance fling,
Where the canopy of spring
Breathes of flowers and gleams with gems,
Here I wish that air to play,
Which to words that Cynthia wrote
I have set—­a simple note.

Chloris. 
And the song, senora, say,
What ’s the theme?

Nisida. 
                    A touching strain,—­
How a nightingale in a grove
Singing sweetly of his love,
Sang its pleasure and its pain.

Enter Cynthia (reading in a book).

Cynthia (to herself). 
Whilst each alley here discloses
Youthful nymphs, who as they pass
To Diana’s shrine, the grass
Turn to beds of fragrant roses,—­
Where the interlac`ed bars
Of these woods their beauty dowers
Seem a verdant sky of flowers—­
Seem an azure field of stars. 
I shall here recline and read
(While they wander through the grove)
Ovid’s ‘Remedy of Love.’

Nisida (to Chloris). 
Hear the words and air.

Chloris. 
                         Proceed.

Nisida (singing). 
O nightingale, whose sweet exulting strain
Tells of thy triumphs to the listening grove,
Thou fill’st my heart with envy and with pain. 
But no; but no; for if thou sing’st of love,
Jealousy’s pangs and sorrow’s tears remain.