Cangia, cangia consiglio,
Pazzerella che sei,
Che il pentirsi dassezzo nulla giova;
such is the burden of her song, or yet again, recalling the golden days of love she too of yore had wasted:
Il mondo invecchia
E invecchiando intristisce.
Words of profound melancholy these, uttered in the days of the burnt-out fires of the renaissance. But all this moves not Silvia, nymph of the woods and of the chase, and, if she is indeed as fancy-free as she would have us believe, her lover may even console himself with the reflection that
If of herself she will not love,
Nothing will make her--
The devil take her!
She has, after all, every right to the position. The next scene introduces Aminta and his friend Tirsi, to whom he reveals the object and the history of his love. Translated into bald prose, his confession has no very great interest, but it opens with one of those exquisitely pencilled sketches that lie scattered throughout the play.
All' ombra d' un bel faggio Silvia e Filli
Sedean un giorno, ed io con loro insieme;
Quando un' ape ingegnosa, che cogliendo
Sen giva il mel per que' prati fioriti,
Alle guance di Fillide volando,
Alle guance vermiglie come rosa,
Le morse e le rimorse avidamente;
Ch' alla similitudine ingannata
Forse un fior le credette.
Silvia heals the hurt by whispering over it a charm; and the whole description is instinct with that delicate, soft sentiment of Tasso's which almost, though never quite, sinks into sentimentality. Aminta feigns to have been stung on the lip, and begs Silvia to heal the hurt.
La semplicetta Silvia,
Pietosa del mio male,
S' offrì di dar aita
Alla finta ferita, ahi lasso! e fece
Più cupa e più mortale
La mia piaga verace,
Quando le labbra sue
Giunse alle labbra mie.
It is easy to argue that this is childish, that it mattered no whit though they kissed from now to doomsday. But only the reader who cannot feel its beauty is safe from the enervating narcotic of Tasso's style.