When as the sun towards Capricorn declines,
Then do the rains enrich the streams,
As towards the line he goes, or thence returns,
More felt is each Æolian messenger,
Warming the more with every lengthening day
What time towards burning Cancer he remounts.
And equal to this heat, this cold, this zeal
Are these my tears, my sighs, the ardour that I feel.
My constant sighs, my never waning flames
Are only equal to my tears.
My floods and flames howe'er intense they be,
Are never more so than my sighs;
I burn with fervid heat,
And, firmly fixed, I ever sigh and weep.
Cic. This does not so much declare the meaning
of the coat of arms, as the preceding discourse did, but it rather supplements or accompanies that discourse.
Tans. Say, rather, that the figure is latent in the first part, and the legend is well explained in the second; as both the one and the other are very properly signified in the type of the sun and of the earth.
Cic. Pass on to the third.
III.
Tans. The third bears on his shield a naked child, stretched upon the green turf, who rests his head upon his arm, with his eyes turned towards the sky to certain edifices, towers, gardens, and orchards, which are above the clouds, and there is a castle of which the material is fire, and in the middle is the sign inscribed: "Mutuo fulcimur."
Cic. What does that mean?
Tans. It means that enthusiast, signified by the naked child as simple, pure, and exposed to all the accidents of Nature and of fortune, who at the same time by the force of thought, constructs castles in the air, and amongst other things a tower, of which the architect is Love, the material is the amorous fire, and the builder is himself, who says: "Mutuo fulcimur"—that is, I build and uphold you there with
my thought, and you uphold me here with hope; you would not be in existence were it not for the imagination and the thought with which I form and uphold you, and I should not be alive were it not for the refreshment and comfort that I receive through your means.