Of these my tears a fountain fiercely springs,
      Where Venus bains[1] herself incensed with love,
    Where Cupid bowseth[2] his fair feathered wings;
      But I behold what pains I must approve. 
        Care drinks it dry; but when on her I think,
        Love makes me weep it full unto the brink.

    Meanwhile my sighs yield truce unto my tears,
      By them the winds increased and fiercely blow: 
    Yet when I sigh the flame more plain appears,
      And by their force with greater power doth glow: 
        Amid these pains, all phoenix-like I thrive
        Since love, that yields me death, may life revive.[3]

    Rosader en esperance.

[Footnote 1:  bathes.]

[Footnote 2:  dips.]

[Footnote 3:  This song is said to be an imitation of Desportes’s sonnet beginning,

    Si je me siez a l’ombre aussi soudainement.]

“Now, surely, forester,” quoth Aliena, “when thou madest this sonnet, thou wert in some amorous quandary, neither too fearful as despairing of thy mistress’ favors, nor too gleesome as hoping in thy fortunes.”

“I can smile,” quoth Ganymede, “at the sonettos, canzones, madrigals, rounds and roundelays, that these pensive patients pour out when their eyes are more full of wantonness, than their hearts of passions.  Then, as the fishers put the sweetest bait to the fairest fish, so these Ovidians, holding amo in their tongues, when their thoughts come at haphazard, write that they be rapt in an endless labyrinth of sorrow, when walking in the large lease of liberty, they only have their humors in their inkpot.  If they find women so fond, that they will with such painted lures come to their lust, then they triumph till they be full-gorged with pleasures; and then fly they away, like ramage[1] kites, to their own content, leaving the tame fool, their mistress, full of fancy, yet without even a feather.  If they miss, as dealing with some wary wanton, that wants not such a one as themselves, but spies their subtlety, they end their amours with a few feigned sighs; and so their excuse is, their mistress is cruel, and they smother passions with patience.  Such, gentle forester, we may deem you to be, that rather pass away the time here in these woods with writing amorets, than to be deeply enamored (as you say) of your Rosalynde.  If you be such a one, then I pray God, when you think your fortunes at the highest, and your desires to be most excellent, then that you may with Ixion embrace Juno in a cloud, and have nothing but a marble mistress to release your martyrdom; but if you be true and trusty, eye-pained and heart-sick, then accursed be Rosalynde if she prove cruel:  for, forester (I flatter not) thou art worthy of as fair as she.”  Aliena, spying the storm by the wind, smiled to see how Ganymede flew to the fist without any call; but Rosader, who took him flat for a shepherd’s swain, made him this answer: