XXX.

Fair-seemly pleasance each to other makes,
With goodly purposes, there as they sit;
And in his falsed fancy he her takes
To be the fairest wight, that lived yet;
Which to express, he bends his gentle wit;
And, thinking of those branches green to frame

A garland for her dainty forehead fit,

He pluckt a bough; out of whose rift there came* Small drops of gory blood, that trickled down the same.

* See the Gerusalemme Liberata, Canto xiii., st. 41.

"Pur tragge al fin la spada, e con gran forza
Percote l'alta pianta. Oh meraviglia!
Manda fuor sangue la recisa scorza,
E fa la terra intorno a se vermiglia,
Tutto si raccapriccia; e pur rinforza
Il colpo, e'l fin vederne ei si consiglia.
Allor, quasi di tomba, uscir ne sente
Un indistinto gemito dolente,

"Che poi distinto in voce: Ahi troppo (disse), &c.

He drew his blade at length, and with a bound
Struck at the towering tree: Oh, marvel sore;
Blood followed, from the bark, the gaping wound,
And dyed the verdant turf beneath with gore;
His hair on end, he boldly struck once more,
Resolved the depths of this foul spell to sound,
When from the tree as from some hollow tomb,
A groaning murmur issued through the gloom,

Then words distinctly uttered; "Ah forbear!"
So spake the voice; &c.

XXXI.

Therewith a piteous yelling voice was heard,
Crying, "O spare with guilty hands to tear
My tender sides in this rough rind embarr'd;
But fly, ah! fly far hence away, for fear
Lest to you hap, that happened to me here,
And to this wretched lady, my dear love;

O too dear love, love bought with death too dear !"
Astound he stood, and up his hair did hove:

And with that sudden horror could no member move.

XXXII.

At last whenas the dreadf passion

Was overpast, and manhood well awake;
Yet musing at the strange occasion

And doubting much his sense, he thus bespake:
"What voice of damned ghost from Limbo lake,
Or guileful spright wandring in empty air
(Both which frail men do oftentimes mistake),
Sends to my doubtful ears these speeches rare,
And rueful plaints, me bidding guiltless blood to spare ?"

XXXIII.

Then, groaning deep; "Nor damned ghost," quoth he, "Nor guileful sprite, to thee these words doth speak; But once a man Fradubio, now a tree;

Wretched man, wretched tree! whose nature weak
A cruel witch, her cursed will to wreak
Hath thus transformd, and plac'd in open plains,
Where Boreas doth blow full bitter bleak,
And scorching sun does dry my secret veins;
For though a tree I seem, yet cold and heat me pains."

66

XXXIV.

'Say on, Fradubio, then, or man or tree,"
Quoth then the knight; "by whose mischievous arts
Art thou misshaped thus, as now I see?
He oft finds med'cine who his grief imparts;
But double griefs afflict concealing hearts;

As raging flames who striveth to suppress."
"The author then," said he, "of all my smarts,
Is one Duessa, a false sorceress,

This many errant knights hath brought to wretchedness.

XXXV.

"In prime of youthly years, when courage hot

The fire of love and joy of chivalry

First kindled in my breast, it was my lot
To love this gentle lady, whom ye see
Now not a lady, but a seeming tree;
With whom as once I rode accompany'd,
Me chanced of a knight encountred be,
That had a like fair lady by his side;
Like a fair lady, but did foul Duessa hide.

We omit some stanzas of Fradubio's story as rather of an unpleasing strain; his yielding so implicitly to the deceptions of Duessa, and showing so little passion at the recollection of the sad fate of his mistress "turn'd to treen mould"-i. e. transformed into a tree-by the false witch's arts, create a sort of disgust with his character. Indeed we can hardly help suspecting our own "good knight" to be rather a dull fellow, too; for it is leze majesté against all-potent Love, to suppose that a vile Show like Duessa could for a moment deceive eyes that had once

owned his power, unless the lover lacked some of the true ele

ments.

Fradubio finishes his sad story with the account of his own enclosure in the tree, and then the Red Cross Knight asks the duration of the spell :—

XLIII.

"But how long time," said then the elfin knight,
"Are you in this misformed house to dwell?"
"We may not change," quoth he, "this evil plight,
Till we be bathed in a living well;

That is the term prescribed by the spell."

"O how," said he, "might I that well out find,
That may restore you to your wonted well ?"

"Time and suffised fates to former kind

Shall us restore; none else from hence may us unbind."

XLIV.

The false Duessa, now Fidessa hight,

Heard how in vain Fradubio did lament,

And knew well all was true. But the good knight,

Full of sad fear and ghastly dreariment,

When all this speech the living tree had spent,
The bleeding bough did thrust into the ground,
That from the blood he might be innocent,

And with fresh clay did close the wooden wound :
Then turning to his lady, dead with fear her found.

XLV.

Her seeming dead he found with feigned fear,
As all unweeting of that well she knew;
And pain'd himself with busy care to rear
Her out of careless swoun. Her eyelids blue,

And dimmed sight with pale and deadly hue,
At last she up gan lift; with trembling cheer
Her up he took (too simple and too true),
And oft her kist. At length, all passed fear,

He set her on her steed, and forward forth did bear.

The exquisite description with which the next Canto opens, is not perhaps surpassed in the language. Una's unprotected and sad, but not timorous state-her beauty-her calmness-her heroic courage and pity at sight of the lion, and the immediate and natural reference to her lost love-overpower even the exquisite picturesqueness of the scene, and give us a picture that can never be painted, save by the imagination and the heart.