Turn I my looks unto the skies,
    Love with his arrows wounds mine eyes;
    If so I gaze upon the ground,
    Love then in every flower is found. 
    Search I the shade to fly my pain,
    He meets me in the shade again;
    Wend I to walk in secret grove,
    Even there I meet with sacred Love. 
    If so I bain[1] me in the spring,
    Even on the brink I hear him sing: 
    If so I meditate alone,
    He will be partner of my moan. 
    If so I mourn, he weeps with me,
    And where I am there will he be. 
    Whenas I talk of Rosalynde
    The god from coyness waxeth kind,
    And seems in selfsame flames to fry
    Because he loves as well as I.
    Sweet Rosalynde, for pity rue;
    For why, than Love I am more true: 
    He, if he speed, will quickly fly,
    But in thy love I live and die.

[Footnote 1:  bathe.]

“How like you this sonnet?” quoth Rosader.

“Marry,” quoth Ganymede, “for the pen well, for the passion ill; for as I praise the one, I pity the other, in that thou shouldst hunt after a cloud, and love either without reward or regard.”

“’Tis not her frowardness,” quoth Rosader, “but my hard fortunes, whose destinies have crossed me with her absence; for did she feel my loves, she would not let me linger in these sorrows.  Women, as they are fair, so they respect faith, and estimate more, if they be honorable, the will than the wealth, having loyalty the object whereat they aim their fancies.  But leaving off these interparleys,[1] you shall hear my last sonetto, and then you have heard all my poetry.”  And with that he sighed out this: 

[Footnote 1:  discussions.]

Rosader’s third Sonnet

    Of virtuous love myself may boast alone,
      Since no suspect my service may attaint: 
    For perfect fair she is the only one,
      Whom I esteem for my beloved saint. 
        Thus, for my faith I only bear the bell,
        And for her fair she only doth excel.

    Then let fond Petrarch shroud his Laura’s praise,
      And Tasso cease to publish his affect,
    Since mine the faith confirmed at all assays,
      And hers the fair, which all men do respect. 
        My lines her fair, her fair my faith assures;
        Thus I by love, and love by me endures.

“Thus,” quoth Rosader, “here is an end of my poems, but for all this no release of my passions; so that I resemble him that in the depth of his distress hath none but the echo to answer him.”

Ganymede, pitying her Rosader, thinking to drive him out of this amorous melancholy, said that now the sun was in his meridional heat and that it was high noon, “therefore we shepherds say, ’tis time to go to dinner; for the sun and our stomachs are shepherds’ dials.  Therefore, forester, if thou wilt take such fare as comes out of our homely scrips, welcome shall answer whatsoever thou wantest in delicates.”