Sonetto_

Of all chaste birds the Phoenix doth excell,
Of all strong beasts the lion bears the bell,
Of all sweet flowers the rose doth sweetest smell,
Of all fair maids my Rosalynde is fairest.

Of all pure metals gold is only purest,
Of all high trees the pine hath highest crest,
Of all soft sweets I like my mistress' breast,
Of all chaste thoughts my mistress' thoughts are rarest.

Of all proud birds the eagle pleaseth Jove,
Of pretty fowls kind Venus likes the dove,
Of trees Minerva doth the olive love,
Of all sweet nymphs I honor Rosalynde.

Of all her gifts her wisdom pleaseth most,
Of all her graces virtue she doth boast:
For all these gifts my life and joy is lost,
If Rosalynde prove cruel and unkind.

In these and such like passions Rosader did every day eternize the
name of his Rosalynde; and this day especially when Aliena and
Ganymede, enforced by the heat of the sun to seek for shelter, by good
fortune arrived in that place, where this amorous forester registered
his melancholy passions. They saw the sudden change of his looks, his
folded arms, his passionate sighs: they heard him often abruptly call
on Rosalynde, who, poor soul, was as hotly burned as himself, but that
she shrouded her pains in the cinders of honorable modesty. Whereupon,
guessing him to be in love, and according to the nature of their sex
being pitiful in that behalf, they suddenly brake off his melancholy
by their approach, and Ganymede shook him out of his dumps thus:

"What news, forester? hast thou wounded some deer, and lost him in the
fall? Care not man for so small a loss: thy fees was but the skin, the
shoulder, and the horns: 'tis hunter's luck to aim fair and miss; and
a woodman's fortune to strike and yet go without the game."

"Thou art beyond the mark, Ganymede," quoth Aliena: "his passions are
greater, and his sighs discovers more loss: perhaps in traversing
these thickets, he hath seen some beautiful nymph, and is grown
amorous."

"It may be so," quoth Ganymede, "for here he hath newly engraven some
sonnet: come, and see the discourse of the forester's poems."

Reading the sonnet over, and hearing him name Rosalynde, Aliena looked
on Ganymede and laughed, and Ganymede looking back on the forester,
and seeing it was Rosader, blushed; yet thinking to shroud all under
her page's apparel, she boldly returned to Rosader, and began thus:

"I pray thee