All night about the forest roved the count,
And, at the break of daily light, was brought
By his unhappy fortune to the fount,
Where his inscription young Medoro wrought.
To see his wrongs inscribed upon that mount,
Inflamed his fury so, in him was nought
But turned to hatred, frenzy, rage, and spite;
Nor paused he more, but bared his falchion bright.
Cleft through the writing; and the solid block,
Into the sky, in tiny fragments sped.
Wo worth each sapling and that caverned rock,
Where Medore and Angelica were read!
So scathed, that they to shepherd or to flock
Thenceforth shall never furnish shade or bed.
And that sweet fountain, late so clear and pure,
From such tempestuous wrath was ill secure.
For he turf, stone, and trunk, and shoot, and lop
Cast without cease into the beauteous source;
Till, turbid from the bottom to the top,
Never again was clear the troubled course.
At length, for lack of breath, compelled to stop,
(When he is bathed in sweat, and wasted force,
Serves not his fury more) he falls, and lies
Upon the mead, and, gazing upward, sighs.
Wearied and woe-begone, he fell to ground,
And turned his eyes toward heaven; nor spake he aught,
Nor ate, nor slept, till in his daily round
The golden sun had broken thrice, and sought
His rest anew; nor ever ceased his wound
To rankle, till it marred his sober thought.
At length, impelled by frenzy, the fourth day,
He from his limbs tore plate and mail away.
Thus begins the madness of Orlando, who, after performing prodigious deeds of strength on men, cattle, and trees, is seized with restlessness, and wanders far and wide:
Now right, now left, he wandered, far and wide,
Throughout all France, and reached a bridge one day;
Beneath which ran an ample water's tide,
Of steep and broken banks: a turret gray
Was builded by the spacious river's side,
Discerned, from far and near, and every way.
What here he did I shall relate elsewhere,
Who first must make the Scottish prince my care.
The Scottish prince, to whom the poet refers in these last lines, is the same Zerbino whom we have left pursuing the wretch who wounded the young Medoro. Zerbino is young, handsome, and brave, and has married Isabella, daughter of the king of Gallicia, whom he loves and by whom he is loved with tender conjugal affection. Now his time has come to die. He, with Isabella, arrives on the scene of Orlando's madness and finds the scattered arms of Orlando, which he gathers together and hangs on a tree, with an inscription telling whose they are, and forbidding all to touch them. Just then up comes Mandricardo, emperor of Tartary, accompanied by Doralice, his lady-love, and attempts to take Orlando's sword Durindane. The two warriors fight, and Zerbino being fatally wounded, Doralice, at the prayer of Isabella, prevails on Mandricardo to end the battle: yet it is too late to save the life of Zerbino.
Neither the wars of Charlemagne nor the madness of Orlando gives a real unity to the poem; the nearest thing to such a unity is to be found in the story of Roger and Brandiamante, the former a pagan, the latter a Christian, daughter of Aymon and sister to Rinaldo. They love each other, seek each other, and after countless adventures by land and sea, are united in marriage, thus founding the house of Este. It is with Roger's conversion to Christianity and his marriage that the poem ends. All the different heroes are gathered together before the walls of Paris, Orlando's madness has been cured by Astolfo, who has made his famous visit to the moon, where, in the paradise of fools, he recovers the lost brain of his friend; Rinaldo, on his wedding day, slays Rodamonte, the truculent and hitherto unconquerable enemy of the Christians, and with his fall the war and the poem are ended.
Hard as it is to give a clear conception of the complicated adventures told in the Orlando Furioso, it is perhaps still harder to give an idea of its charm to these who have not read it. We are introduced at once into a world of fancy, a sort of fairy-book for grown-up people. The poem is not deeply impressive like the Divine Comedy, it has no elements of tragedy. Ariosto did not aim at moral effect, but merely sought to amuse his readers. Dante represents the deep, mystical religious feeling of his times; Ariosto represents the worldliness of the neo-paganism of the Renaissance. The asceticism of the Middle Ages now gives way to intense delight in the life that now is. The artist and poet sought to represent the pomp and circumstance of life, man in his physical and intellectual power, woman in her beauty, nature in all its picturesque variety, art in its magnificence. This was the ideal followed by Ariosto; this was the ideal of the Italian Renaissance.
The great charm of Ariosto is his style. Here form reaches its highest expression. He worked over and polished his verses unceasingly, yet so natural are they that they seem to have been written spontaneously. The Orlando is full of beautiful descriptions, of pathetic scenes, alternating skilfully with humorous ones. Ariosto's humor, however, is not coarse or grotesque, but refined and elegant. He does not caricature the stories of chivalry, as Cervantes does in Don Quixote; but living in a skeptical age he cannot take seriously the creatures of his own fancy, and accompanies the prodigious deeds of his heroes with a smile of good-natured irony.