artyrdom,
Through recollection, make us entertain
Delights with greater rapture, when they come.
But if weak mind be poisoned by that bane,
That filthy pest, conceived in Stygian home,
Though joy ensue, with all its festive pleasures,
The wretched lover ill his comfort measures.

V
This is that cruel and envenomed wound
Where neither salve nor portion soothes the smart;
Nor figure made by witch, nor murmured sound;
Nor star benign observed in friendly part;
Nor aught beside by Zoroaster found,
Inventor as he was of magic art.
Fell wound, which, more than every other woe,
Makes wretched man despair, and lays him low!

VI
O' cruel wound! incapable of cure,
Inflicted with such ease on lover's breast,
No less by false suspicion than by sure!
O wound! whose pangs so wofully molest,
They reason and our better wit obscure,
And from it natural bent our judgment wrest:
Wound, which against all reason didst destroy
The damsel of Dordona's every joy!

VII
I speak not of what fatal mischief wrought
Hippalca's and the brother's bitter blow;
I speak of fell and cruel tidings brought
Some few days after; for the former woe,
Weighed with this other, was a thing of nought:
This after some digression will I show:
But first Rinaldo's feats I must declare,
Who with his troop to Paris made repair.

VIII
The following day they met a cavalier,
Towards evening, with a lady by his side;
Sable his shield, and sable was his gear,
Whose ground a bar of silver did divide.
As foremost, and of seeming force, the peer,
Young Richardetto to the joust defend:
He, prompt for battle, wheeled his courser round,
And for the tourney took sufficient ground.

IX
Between those knights no further parley past:
Without more question, charged the martial two.
Rinaldo with the friendly troop stood fast,
And looked to see what issue would ensue.
"Him from his saddle will I quickly cast,
If firm the footing, and mine arm prove true";
Within himself young Richardetto cries:
But that encounter ends in other wise.

X
Him underneath the vizor's sight offends
The stranger champion, of the sable weed,
With force so fell, that he the youth extends
Above two lances' length beyond his steed.
Quickly to venge the knight Alardo wends,
But falls himself astounded on the mead;
Sore handled, and unhorsed by such a stroke,
His buckler