, he tunes the string,
He music plays if so I sing;
He lends me every lovely thing,
Yet cruel he my heart doth sting.
Whist, wanton, still ye!

Else I with roses every day
Will whip you hence,
And bind you, when you long to play,
For your offence;
I'll shut mine eyes to keep you in,
I'll make you fast it for your sin,
I'll count your power not worth a pin.
Alas, what hereby shall I win,
If he gainsay me?

What if I beat the wanton boy
With many a rod?
He will repay me with annoy,
Because a God.
Then sit thou safely on my knee,
And let thy bower my bosom be;
Lurk in mine eyes, I like of thee.
O Cupid, so thou pity me,
Spare not but play thee.

Scarce had Rosalynde ended her madrigal, before Torismond came in with
his daughter Alinda and many of the peers of France, who were enamored
of her beauty; which Torismond perceiving, fearing lest her perfection
might be the beginning of his prejudice, and the hope of his fruit end
in the beginning of her blossoms, he thought to banish her from the
court: "for," quoth he to himself, "her face is so full of favor, that
it pleads pity in the eye of every man; her beauty is so heavenly and
divine, that she will prove to me as Helen did to Priam; some one of
the peers will aim at her love, end the marriage, and then in his
wife's right attempt the kingdom. To prevent therefore _had I wist_ in
all these actions, she tarries not about the court, but shall (as an
exile) either wander to her father, or else seek other fortunes." In
this humor, with a stern countenance full of wrath, he breathed out
this censure unto her before the peers, that charged her that that
night she were not seen about the court: "for," quoth he, "I have
heard of thy aspiring speeches, and intended treasons." This doom was
strange unto Rosalynde, and presently, covered with the shield of her
innocence, she boldly brake out in reverent terms to have cleared
herself; but Torismond would admit of no reason, nor durst his lords
plead for Rosalynde, although her beauty had made some of them
passionate, seeing the figure of wrath portrayed in his brow. Standing
thus all mute, and Rosalynde amazed, Alinda, who loved her more than
herself, with grief in her heart and tears in her eyes, falling down
on her knees, began to entreat her father thus:

ALINDA'S ORATION TO HER FATHER IN DEFENCE OF FAIR ROSALYNDE