all the others of that band
Him would Montalban's lord caress and grace:
Why more than all the others will appear
In other strain, if you that strain will hear.

CANTO 44

ARGUMENT
Rinaldo his sister to the Child hath plight,
And to Marseilles is with the warrior gone:
And having crimsoned wide the field in fight,
Therein arrives King Otho's valiant son.
To Paris thence: where to that squadron bright
Is mighty grace and wonderous honour done.
The Child departs, resolved on Leo's slaughter,
To whom Duke Aymon had betrothed his daughter.

I
In poor abode, mid paltry walls and bare,
Amid discomforts and calamities,
Often in friendship heart united are,
Better than under roof of lordly guise,
Or in some royal court, beset with snare,
Mid envious wealth, and ease, and luxuries;
Where charity is spent on every side,
Nor friendship, unless counterfeit, is spied.

II
Hence it ensues that peace and pact between
Princes and peers are of such short-lived wear.
To-day king, pope, and emperor leagued are seen,
And on the marrow deadly foemen are.
Because such is not as their outward mien
The heart, the spirit, that those sovereigns bear.
Since, wholly careless as to right or wrong,
But to their profit look the faithless throng.

III
Though little prone to friendship is that sort,
Because with those she loveth not to dwell,
Who, be their talk in earnest or in sport,
Speak not, except some cozening tale to tell;
Yet if together in some poor resort
They prisoned are by Fortune false and fell,
What friendship is they speedily discern;
Though years had past, and this was yet to learn.

IV
In his retreat that ancient eremite
Could bind his inmates with a faster noose,
And in true love more firmly them unite,
Than other could in domes where courtiers use;
And so enduring was the knot and tight,
That nothing short of death the tie could loose.
Benignant all the hermit found that crew;
Whiter at heart than swans in outward hue.

V
All kind he found them, and of courteous lore;
Untainted with iniquity, in wise
Of them I painted, and who nevermore
Go forth, unless concealed in some disguise.
Of injuries among them done before
All memory, by those comrades buried lies:
Nor could they better love, if from one womb
And from one seed that warlike band had come.

VI
Rinaldo more than all that lor