“Thus,” quoth Ganymede, “I keep decorum:  I speak now as I am Aliena’s page, not as I am Gerismond’s daughter; for put me but into a petticoat, and I will stand in defiance to the uttermost, that women are courteous, constant, virtuous, and what not.”

“Stay there,” quoth Aliena, “and no more words, for yonder be characters graven upon the bark of the tall beech tree.”

“Let us see,” quoth Ganymede; and with that they read a fancy written to this effect: 

    First shall the heavens want starry light,
      The seas be robbed of their waves,
    The day want sun, and sun want bright,
      The night want shade, the dead men graves,
    The April flowers and leaf and tree,
    Before I false my faith to thee.

    First shall the tops of highest hills
      By humble plains be overpried,
    And poets scorn the Muses’ quills,
      And fish forsake the water glide,
    And Iris loose her colored weed,[1]
    Before I fail thee at thy need.

    First direful hate shall turn to peace,
      And love relent in deep disdain,
    And death his fatal stroke shall cease,
      And envy pity every pain,
    And pleasure mourn and sorrow smile,
    Before I talk of any guile.

    First time shall stay his stayless race,
      And winter bless his brows with corn,
    And snow bemoisten July’s face,
      And winter spring, and summer mourn,
    Before my pen, by help of fame,
    Cease to recite thy sacred name.

    MONTANUS

[Footnote 1:  garment.  In what modern expression is this meaning of the word retained?]

“No doubt,” quoth Ganymede, “this protestation grew from one full of passions.”

“I am of that mind too,” quoth Aliena, “but see, I pray, when poor women seek to keep themselves chaste, how men woo them with many feigned promises; alluring with sweet words as the Sirens, and after proving as trothless as Aeneas.  Thus promised Demophoon to his Phyllis, but who at last grew more false?”

“The reason was,” quoth Ganymede, “that they were women’s sons, and took that fault of their mother, for if man had grown from man, as Adam did from the earth, men had never been troubled with inconstancy.”

“Leave off,” quoth Aliena, “to taunt thus bitterly, or else I’ll pull off your page’s apparel, and whip you, as Venus doth her wantons, with nettles.”

“So you will,” quoth Ganymede, “persuade me to flattery, and that needs not:  but come, seeing we have found here by this fount the tract of shepherds by their madrigals and roundelays, let us forward; for either we shall find some folds, sheepcotes, or else some cottages wherein for a day or two to rest.”