’Whoe’er thou art, maid among maidens queen,
    Goddess, or nymph—­nay, goddess seems most clear—­
  If goddess, sure my Dian I have seen;
    If mortal, let thy proper self appear! 
  Beyond terrestrial beauty is thy mien;
    I have no merit that I should be here! 
  What grace of heaven, what lucky star benign
  Yields me the sight of beauty so divine?’

A conversation ensues, after which Giuliano departs utterly lovesick, and Cupid takes wing exultingly for Cyprus, where his mother’s palace stands.  In the following picture of the house of Venus, who shall say how much of Ariosto’s Alcina and Tasso’s Armida is contained?  Cupid arrives, and the family of Love is filled with joy at Giuliano’s conquest.  From the plan of the poem it is clear that its beauties are chiefly those of detail.  They are, however, very great.  How perfect, for example, is the richness combined with delicacy of the following description of a country life:—­

BOOK I. STANZAS 17-21.

  How far more safe it is, how far more fair,
    To chase the flying deer along the lea;
  Through ancient woods to track their hidden lair,
    Far from the town, with long-drawn subtlety: 
  To scan the vales, the hills, the limpid air,
    The grass and flowers, clear ice, and streams so free;
  To hear the birds wake from their winter trance,
  The wind-stirred leaves and murmuring waters dance.

  How sweet it were to watch the young goats hung
    From toppling crags, cropping the tender shoot,
  While in thick pleached shade the shepherd sung
    His uncouth rural lay and woke his flute;
  To mark, mid dewy grass, red apples flung,
    And every bough thick set with ripening fruit,
  The butting rams, kine lowing o’er the lea,
  And cornfields waving like the windy sea.

  Lo! how the rugged master of the herd
    Before his flock unbars the wattled cote;
  Then with his rod and many a rustic word
    He rules their going:  or ’tis sweet to note
  The delver, when his toothed rake hath stirred
    The stubborn clod, his hoe the glebe hath smote;
  Barefoot the country girl, with loosened zone,
  Spins, while she keeps her geese ’neath yonder stone.

  After such happy wise, in ancient years,
    Dwelt the old nations in the age of gold;
  Nor had the fount been stirred of mothers’ tears
    For sons in war’s fell labour stark and cold;
  Nor trusted they to ships the wild wind steers,
    Nor yet had oxen groaning ploughed the wold;
  Their houses were huge oaks, whose trunks had store
  Of honey, and whose boughs thick acorns bore.

  Nor yet, in that glad time, the accursed thirst
    Of cruel gold had fallen on this fair earth: 
  Joyous in liberty they lived at first;
    Unploughed the fields sent forth their teeming birth;
  Till fortune, envious of such concord, burst
    The bond of law, and pity banned and worth;
  Within their breasts sprang luxury and that rage
  Which men call love in our degenerate age.