Note 1. From Rosalind, 1590. Mr. Bullen says this was doubtless suggested by Desportes’ sonnet:
Si je me siez à l’ombre, assui soudainement
Amour, laissant son arc, s’assied et se repose;
Si je pense à des vers, je le voy qui compose;
Si je plains mes douleurs, il se plaint hautement.
Si je me plains au mal, il accroist mon tourment;
Si je respans des pleurs, son visage il arrose;
Si je monstre ma playe, en ma poitrine enclose,
Il défait son bandeau, l’essuyant doucement.
Si je vais par les bois, aux bois il m’accompagne;
Si je me suis cruel, dans mon sang il se bagne;
Si je vais à la guerre, il devient mon soldat.
Si je passe la mer, il conduit ma nacelle;
Bref, jamais l’importun de moy ne se départ,
Pour rendre mon désir et ma peine eternelle.
“Lodge was fond of this sonnet of Desportes,” says Mr. Bullen. He gives a literal translation of it in Scylla’s Metamorphosis, 1589:
“If so I seek the shades I suddenly do see
The god of love forsake his bow and sit by me;
If that I think to write his muses pliant be,
If so I plain my grief the wanton boy will cry.
If I lament his pride he doth increase my pain;
If tears my cheeks attaint, his cheeks are moist with moan;
If I disclose the wounds the which my heart hath slain,
He takes his fascia off and wipes them dry anon.
If so I walk the woods, the woods are his delight;
If I myself torment, he bathes him in my blood;
If seas delight, he steers my bark amid the flood:
He will my soldier be if once I went to fight;
In brief the cruel god doth never from here go,
But makes my lasting love eternal with my woe.”
Lodge reprinted this with alterations in Phillis: Honoured with Sundry Sonnets, 1593. Elizabethan Sonnets, in An English Garner, Seccombe ed., 1904, number xxxvi. [back]
