THE MADNESS OF ORLANDO
From ‘Orlando Furioso,’ Canto 23
The course in pathless
woods, which without rein
The Tartar’s
charger had pursued astray,
Made Roland for two
days, with fruitless pain,
Follow him,
without tidings of his way.
Orlando reached a rill
of crystal vein,
On either
bank of which a meadow lay;
Which, stained with
native hues and rich, he sees,
And dotted o’er
with fair and many trees.
The mid-day fervor made
the shelter sweet
To hardy
herd as well as naked swain:
So that Orlando well
beneath the heat
Some deal
might wince, opprest with plate and chain.
He entered for repose
the cool retreat,
And found
it the abode of grief and pain;
And place of sojourn
more accursed and fell
On that unhappy day,
than tongue can tell.
Turning him round, he
there on many a tree
Beheld engraved,
upon the woody shore,
What as the writing
of his deity
He knew,
as soon as he had marked the lore.
This was a place of
those described by me,
Whither
oft-times, attended by Medore,
From the near shepherd’s
cot had wont to stray
The beauteous lady,
sovereign of Catay.
In a hundred knots,
amid these green abodes,
In a hundred
parts, their ciphered names are dight;
Whose many letters are
so many goads,
Which Love
has in his bleeding heart-core pight.
He would discredit in
a thousand modes,
That which
he credits in his own despite;
And would perforce persuade
himself, that rind
Other Angelica than
his had signed.
“And yet I know
these characters,” he cried,
“Of
which I have so many read and seen;
By her may this Medoro
be belied,
And me,
she, figured in the name, may mean.”
Feeding on such like
phantasies, beside
The real
truth, did sad Orlando lean
Upon the empty hope,
though ill contented,
Which he by self-illusions
had fomented.
But stirred and aye
rekindled it, the more
That he
to quench the ill suspicion wrought,
Like the incautious
bird, by fowler’s lore,
Hampered
in net or lime; which, in the thought
To free its tangled
pinions and to soar,
By struggling
is but more securely caught.
Orlando passes thither,
where a mountain
O’erhangs in guise
of arch the crystal fountain.
* * * * *
Here from his horse
the sorrowing county lit,
And at the
entrance of the grot surveyed
A cloud of words, which
seemed but newly writ,
And which
the young Medoro’s hand had made.
On the great pleasure
he had known in it,
This sentence
he in verses had arrayed;
Which to his tongue,
I deem, might make pretense
To polished phrase;
and such in ours the sense:—