The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia

by Philip Sidney

Then joining all their voices, and dancing a faster measure, they would conclude with some such words:

As without breath no pipe doth move,

No music kindly without love.

Having thus varied both their song and dances into divers sorts of inventions, their last sport was, one of them to provoke another to a more large expressing of his passions: which Thyrsis (accounted one of the best singers amongst them) having marked in Dorus’s dancing, no less good grace and handsome behaviour than extreme tokens of a troubled mind, began first with his pipe, and then with his voice, thus to challenge Dorus, and was by him answered in the under-written sort.

THE FIRST ECLOGUES

THYRSIS and DORUS

THYRSIS

Come Dorus, come, let songs thy sorrows signify,

And if for want of use thy mind ashamed is,

That very shame with love’s high title dignify.

No style is held for base where love well named is:

Each ear sucks up the words a true-love scattereth,

And plain speech oft, than quaint phrase better framed is.

DORUS

Nightingales seldom sing, the pie still chattereth,

The wood cries most, before it thoroughly kindled be,

Deadly wounds inward bleed, each slight sore mattereth.

Hardly they heard, which by good hunters singled be:

Shallow brooks murmur most, deep, silent slide away,

Nor true-love, his love with others mingled be.

THYRSIS

If thou wilt not be seen, thy face go hide away,

Be none of us, or else maintain our fashion:

Who frowns at others’ feasts, doth better bide away.

But if thou hast a love, in that love’s passion,

I challenge thee by show of her perfection,

Which of us two deserveth most compassion.

DORUS

Thy challenge great, but greater my protection:

Sing then, and see (for now thou hast inflamed me)

Thy health too mean a match for my infection.

No, though the heaven’s for high attempts have blamed me,

Yet high is my attempt. O Muse historify

Her praise, whose praise to learn your skill hath framed me.

THYRSIS

Muse hold your peace, but thou my god Pan glorify

My Kala’s gifts, who with all good gifts filled is.

Thy pipe, O Pan, shall help, though I sing sorrily.

A heap of sweets she is, where nothing spilled is;

Who though she be no Bee, yet full of honey is:

A Lily-field, with plough of Rose which tilled is:

Mild as a lamb, more dainty than a coney is:

Her eyes my eye-sight is, her conversation

More glad to me than to a miser money is.

What coy account she makes of estimation?

How nice to touch? how all her speeches poised be?

A nymph thus turned, but mended in translation.

DORUS

Such Kala is: but ah my fancies raised be

In one, whose name to name were high presumption,

Since virtue’s all, to make her title pleased be.

O happy gods, which by inward assumption

Enjoy her soul, in body’s fair possession,

And keep it join’d, fearing your seat’s consumption.

How oft with rain of tears skies make confession,

Their dwellers wrapt with sight of her perfection,

From heav’nly throne to her heav’n use digression?

Of best things then what world shall yield confection

To liken her? deck yours with your comparison:

She is herself of best things the collection.

THYRSIS

How oft my doleful sire cry’d to me, “Tarry son,”

When first he spied my love! how oft he said to me,

“Thou art no soldier fit for Cupid’s garrison?

My son keep this, that my long toil hath laid to me:

Love well thine own, methinks wool’s whiteness passeth all:

I never found long love such wealth hath paid to me.”

This wind he spent: but when my Kala glasseth all

My sight in her fair limbs, I then assure myself,

Not rotten sheep, but high crowns she surpasseth all.

Can I be poor, that her gold hair procure myself?

Want I white wool, whose eyes her white skin garnished?

’Till I get her, shall I to keep inure myself?

DORUS

How oft, when reason saw, love of her harnessed

With armour of my heart, he cried, “O vanity!

To set a pearl in steel so meanly varnished?

Look to thyself, reach not beyond humanity.

Her mind, beams, state, far from the weak wings banished;

And love which lover hurts is inhumanity.”

Thus reason said: but she came, reason vanished;

Her eyes so mastering me, that such objection

Seem’d but to spoil the food of thoughts long famished.

Her peerless height my mind to high erection

Draws up; and if hope-failing end life’s pleasure,

Of fairer death how can I make election?

THYRSIS

Once my well-waiting eyes espy’d my treasure,

With sleeves turn’d up, loose hair, and breasts enlarged,

Her father’s corn, moving her fair limbs, measure.

“O,” cried I, “if so mean work be discharged:

Measure my case how by thy beauty’s filling,

With seed of woes my heart brim-full is charg’d.

Thy father bids thee save, and chides for spilling;

Save then my soul, spill not my thoughts well heap’d,

No lovely praise was ever got by killing.”

Those bold words she did bear, this fruit I reaped,

That she whose look alone might make me blessed,

Did smile on me, and then away she leaped.

DORUS

Once, O sweet once, I saw with dread oppressed

Her whom I dread, so that with prostrate lying

Her length, the earth in love’s chief clothing dressed,

I saw that riches fall, and fell a crying:

“Let not dead earth enjoy so dear a cover,

But deck therewith my soul for your sake dying:

Lay all your fear upon your fearful lover:

Shine eyes on me that both our lives be guarded;

So I your sight, you shall yourselves recover.”

I cry’d, and was with open eyes rewarded:

But straight they fled summon’d by cruel honour,

Honour, the cause desert is not regarded.

THYRSIS

This maid, thus made for joys, O Pan! bemoan her,

That without love she spends her years of love:

So fair a field would well become an owner.

And if enchantment can a hard heart move,

Teach me what circle may acquaint her sprite,

Affection’s charms in my behalf to prove.

The circle is my, round about her, sight,

The power I will invoke dwells in her eyes:

My charm should be, she haunt me day and night.

DORUS

Far other case, O Muse, my sorrow tries,

Bent to such one in whom myself must say,

Nothing can mend one point that in her lies.

What circle then in so rare force bears sway?

Whose sprite all sprites can foil, raise, damn, or save:

No charm holds her, but well possess she may,

Possess she doth, and makes my soul her slave,

My eyes the bands, my thoughts the fatal knot.

No thrall like them that inward bondage have.

THYRSIS

Kala, at length conclude my ling’ring lot:

Disdain me not, although I be not fair,

Who is an heir of many hundred sheep,

Doth beauties keep which never sun can burn,

Nor storms do turn: fairness serves oft to wealth,

Yet all my health I place in your good will:

Which if you will, O do, bestow on me

Such as you see; such still you shall me find,

Constant and kind, my sheep your food shall breed,

Their wool your weed, I will you music yield

In flow’ry field; and as the day begins

With twenty gins we will the small birds take,

And pastimes make, as nature things hath made.

But when in shade we meet of myrtle boughs,

Then love allows our pleasures to enrich,

The thought of which doth pass all worldly pelf.

DORUS

Lady yourself whom neither name I dare,

And titles are but spots to such a worth,

Here plaints come forth from dungeon of my mind,

The noblest kind rejects not others’ woes.

I have no shows of wealth: my wealth is you,

My beauties hue your beams, my health your deeds;

My mind for weeds your virtue’s livery wears.

My food is tears, my tunes lamenting yield,

Despair my field, the flowers spirit’s wars:

My day new cares, my gins my daily sight,

In which do light small birds of thoughts o’erthrown:

My pastimes none: time passeth on my fall:

Nature made all, but me of dolours made,

I find no shade, but where my sun doth burn:

No place to turn; without, within it fries:

Nor help by life or death, who living dies.

THYRSIS

But if my Kala thus my suit denies,

Which so much reason bears:

Let crows pick out mine eyes, which too much saw.

If she still hate love’s law,

My earthly mould doth melt in wat’ry tears.

DORUS

My earthly mould doth melt in wat’ry tears,

And they again resolve

To air of sighs, sighs to the heart fire turn,

Which doth to ashes burn.

Thus doth my life within itself dissolve.

THYRSIS

Thus doth my life within itself dissolve

That I grow like the beast,

Which bears the bit a weaker force doth guide,

Yet patient must abide.

Such weight it hath, which once is full possess’d.

DORUS

Such weight it hath, which once is full possess’d,

That I become a vision,

Which hath in others held his only being,

And lives in fancy’s seeing,

O wretched state of man in self-division!

THYRSIS

O wretched state of man in self-division!

O well thou say’st! a feeling declaration!

Thy tongue hath made, of Cupid’s deep incision.

But now hoarse voice, doth fail this occupation,

And others long to tell their loves’ condition:

Of singing thou hast got the reputation.

DORUS

Of singing thou hast got the reputation,

Good Thyrsis mine, I yield to thy ability;

My heart doth seek another estimation.

But ah, my Muse, I would thou had’st facility

To work my Goddess so by thy invention,

On me to cast those eyes where shine nobility:

Seen and unknown; heard, but without attention.

Dorus did so well in answering Thyrsis that everyone desired to hear him sing something alone. Seeing therefore a lute lying under the Princess Pamela’s feet, glad to have such an errand to approach her, he came, but came with a dismayed grace, all his blood stirred betwixt fear and desire, and playing upon it with such sweetness, as everybody wondered to see such skill in a shepherd, he sung unto it with a sorrowing voice, these elegiac verses:

DORUS

Fortune, Nature, Love, long have contended about me,

Which should most miseries cast on a worm that I am,

Fortune thus gan say, “Misery and misfortune is all one,

And of misfortune, Fortune hath only the gift

With strong foes on land, on sea with contrary tempests,

Still do I cross this wretch, what so he taketh in hand.”

“Tush, tush,” said Nature, “this is all but a trifle, a man’s self

Gives haps or mishaps, even as he ordereth his heart.

But so his humour I frame, in a mould of choler adusted,

That the delights of life shall be to him dolorous.”

Love smiled, and thus said: “Want join’d to desire is unhappy:

But if he nought do desire, what can Heraclitus ail?

None but I work by desire: by desire have I kindled in his soul

Infernal agonies into a beauty divine:

Where thou poor nature left’st all thy due glory, to Fortune

Her virtue’s sovereign, Fortune a vassal of hers.”

Nature abash’d went back: Fortune blush’d: yet she replied thus:

“And even in that love shall I reserve him a spite.”

Thus, thus, alas! woeful by Nature, unhappy by Fortune,

But most wretched I am, now Love awakes my desire.

Dorus when he had sung this, having had all the while a free beholding of the fair Pamela (who could well have spared such honour; and defended the assault he gave unto her face with bringing a fair stain of shamefacedness unto it) let fall his arms, and remained so fastened in his thoughts as if Pamela had grafted him there to grow in continual imagination. But Zelmane espying it, and fearing he should too much forget himself, she came to him, and took out of his hand the lute, and laying fast hold of Philoclea’s face with her eyes, she sung these sapphics, speaking as it were to her own hope:

If mine eyes can speak to do hearty errand,

Or mine eyes’ language she do hap to judge of,

So that eyes’ message be of her received,

Hope we do live yet.

But if eyes fail then, when I most do need them,

Or if eyes’ language be not unto her known,

So that eyes’ message do return rejected,

Hope we do both die.

Yet dying, and dead, do we sing her honour;

So becomes our tombs monuments of our praise;

So becomes our loss the triumph of her gain;

Hers be the glory.

If the spheres senseless do yet hold a music,

If the swan’s sweet voice be not heard, but as death,

If the mute timber when it hath the life lost

Yieldeth a lute’s tune.

Are then human lives privileg’d so meanly,

As that hateful death can abridge them of power

With the vow of truth to record to all worlds

That we be her spoils?

Thus not ending, ends the due praise of her praise:

Fleshly veil consumes; but a soul hath his life,

Which is held in love; love it is, that hath join’d

Life to this our soul.

But if eyes can speak to hearty errand,

Or mine eyes’ language she doth hap to judge of,

So that eyes’ message be of her received

Hope we do live yet.

Great was the pleasure of Basilius, and greater would have been Gynecia’s but that she found too well it was intended to her daughter. As for Philoclea, she was sweetly ravished withal. When Dorus, desiring in a secret manner to speak of their cases, as perchance the parties intended might take some light of it, making low reverence to Zelmane, began this provoking song in Hexameter verse unto her. Whereunto she soon finding whether his words were directed, in like tune and verse, answered as followeth: