Of chastity, none living may compare:
Ne pois'nous envy justly can impair
The praise of her fresh-flow'ring maidenhead;
Forthy1 she standeth on the highest stair
Of th' honourable stage of womanhead,
That ladies all may follow her ensample dead.
In so great praise of steadfast chastity
Nathless she was so courteous and kind,
Temper'd with grace and goodly modesty,
That seeméd those two virtues strove to find
The higher place in her heroic mind:
So striving each did other more augment,
And both increas'd the praise of womankind,
And both increas'd her beauty excellent:
So all did make in her a perfect complement.8
4 Herself. Combine. 6 Since.
The birth of fair Belphoebe and
Of Amorett is told:
The Gardens of Adonis fraught
With pleasures manifold.
WELL may I ween, fair Ladies, all this while
Ye wonder how this noble damosel
So great perfections did in her compile,5
Sith that in savage forests she did dwell,
So far from Court and royal citadel,
The great schoolmistress of all courtesy:
Seemeth that such wild woods should far expel
All civil usage and gentility,
And gentle sprite deform with rude rusticity.
But to this fair Belphoebe in her birth
The heavens so favourable were and free,
Looking with mild aspéct upon the earth
In th' horoscope of her nativity,
That all the gifts of grace and chastity
On her they pouréd forth of plenteous horn:
Jove laugh'd on Venus from his sov'reign see,1
And Phoebus with fair beams did her adorn,
And all the Graces rock'd her cradle being born.
Her birth was of the womb of morning dew,
And her conception of the joyous prime; 2
And all her whole creation did her shew
Pure and unspotted from all loathly crime
That is ingenerate in fleshly slime.
So was this virgin born, so was she bred;
So was she trainéd up from time to time
In all chaste virtue and true bountihed,3
Till to her due perfection she were ripened.
Her mother was the fair Chrysogonee,*
The daughter of Amphisa, who by race
A Faery was, yborn of high degree:
She bore Belphœbe; she bore in like case
Fair Amoretta in the second place:
These two were twins, and twixt them two did
The heritage of all celestial grace;
[share
That all the rest it seem'd they robbéd bare
Of bounty, and of beauty, and all virtues rare.
It were a goodly story to declare
By what strange accident fair Chrysogone
Conceiv'd these infants, and how them she bare
In this wild forest wand'ring all alone,
After she had nine months fulfill'd and gone:
For not as other women's common brood
They were enwombéd in the sacred throne
Of her chaste body; nor with common food,
As other women's babes, they suckéd vital blood:
But wondrously they were begot and bred
Through influence of th' heaven's fruitful ray,
As it in antique books is mentionéd.
It was upon a summer's shiny day,
When Titan fair his beamës did display,
In a fresh fountain, far from all men's view,
She bath'd her breast the boiling heat t' allay;
She bath'd with roses red and violets blue,
And all the sweetest flowers that in the forest grew:
Till, faint through irksome weariness, adown
Upon the grassy ground herself she laid
To sleep, the whiles a gentle slumb'ring swoun
Upon her fell all naked bare display'd:
The sunbeams bright upon her body play'd,
Being through former bathing mollified,
And pierc'd into her womb; where they embayd1
With so sweet sense and secret power unspied,
That in her pregnant flesh they shortly fructified.
Miraculous may seem to him that reads
So strange ensample of conception;
But reason teacheth that the fruitful seeds
Of all things living, through impression
Of the sunbeams in moist complexion,
Do life conceive and quicken'd are by kind:2
So, after Nilus' inundation,
Infinite shapes of creatures men do find
Informéd1 in the mud on which the sun hath shin'd.' Imper
Great father he of generation
Is rightly call'd, th' author of life and light;
And his fair sister2 for creation
Minist'reth matter fit, which, temper'd right
With heat and humour, breeds the living wight.
So sprung these twins in womb of Chrysogone;
Yet wist she naught thereof, but sore affright
Wonder'd to see her belly so upblown,
Which still increas'd till she her term had full out
Whereof conceiving shame and foul disgrace,
Albe1 her guiltless conscience her clear'd,
She fled into the wilderness a space,
Till that unwieldy burden she had rear'd,5
And shunn'd dishonour which as death she fear'd:
Where, weary of long travel, down to rest
Herself she set, and comfortably cheer'd;
There a sad cloud of sleep her overkest,
And seizéd every sense with sorrow sore opprest.
It fortuned, fair Venus having lost
Her little son, the winged god of love,
Who for some light displeasure, which him crost,
Was from her fled as fleet as airy dove,
And left her blissful bower of joy above;
(So from her often he had fled away,
When she for aught him sharply did reprove,
And wander'd in the world in strange array,
Disguis'd in thousand shapes, that none might him
bewray ;)
Him for to seek, she left her heavenly house,
The house of goodly forms and fair aspécts,
Whence all the world derives the glorious
Features of beauty, and all shapes select, [deckt;
With which High God his workmanship hath
And searched every way through which his wings
Had borne him, or his track she might detect:
She promis'd kisses sweet, and sweeter things,
Unto the man that of him tidings to her brings.
First she him sought in Court, where most he us'd
Whilome1 to haunt, but there she found him not;
But many there she found which sore accus'd
His falsehood, and with foul infamous blot
His cruel deeds and wicked wiles did spot:2
Ladies and lords she every where might hear
Complaining, how with his empoison'd shot
Their woful hearts he wounded had whilere,3
And so had left them languishing twixt hope and
fear.
She then the cities sought from gate to gate,
And every one did ask, Did he him see?
And every one her answer'd, that too late
He had him seen, and felt the cruelty
Of his sharp darts and hot artillery:
And every one threw forth reproaches rife
Of his mischievous deeds, and said that he
Was the disturber of all civil life,
of peace, and author of all strife.
Then in the country she abroad him sought,
And in the rural cottages inquir'd;
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