strings;
Even Nature's self, the puissantest of things.'

XXXVIII
"So grieves the maid, so goads herself and wears,
And shows no haste her sorrowing to forego;
Sometimes her face, sometimes her tresses tears,
And levels at herself the vengeful blow.
In pity, Bradamant the sorrow shares,
And is constrained to hear the tale of woe,
She studies to divert, with fruitless pain,
The strange and mad desire; but speaks in vain.

XXXIX
"She, who requires assistance, not support,
Still more laments herself, with grief opprest.
By this the waning day was growing short,
For the low sun was crimsoning the west;
A fitting hour for those to seek a port,
Who would not in the wood set up their rest.
When to this city, near her sylvan haunt,
Young Flordespine invited Bradament.

XL
"My sister the request could ill deny;
And so they came together to the place,
Where, but for you, by that ill squadron I
Had been compelled the cruel flame to face:
There Flordespina made her family
Caress and do my sister no small grace;
And, having in a female robe arraid,
Past her on all beholders for a maid.

XLI
"Because perceiving vantage there was none
In the male cheer by which she was misled,
The damsel held it wise, reproach to shun,
Which might by any carping tongue be said.
And this the rather: that the ill, which one
Of the two garments in her mind had bred,
Now with the other which revealed the cheat,
She would assay to drive from her conceit.

XLII
"The ladies share one common bed that night,
Their bed the same, but different their repose.
One sleeps, one groans and weeps in piteous plight,
Because her wild desire more fiercely glows;
And on her wearied eyes should slumber light,
All is deceitful that brief slumber shows.
To her it seems, as if relenting Heaven
A better sex to Bradamant is given.

XLIII
"As the sick man with burning thirst distrest,
If he should sleep, -- ere he that wish fulfil, --
Aye in his troubled, interrupted rest,
Remembers him of every once-seen rill:
So is the damsel's fancy still possest,
In sleep, with images which glad her will.
Then from the empty dreams which crowd her brain,
She wakes, and, waking, finds the vision vain.

XLIV
"What vows she vowed, how oft that night she prayed,
To all her gods and Mahound, in despair!
-- That they, by open miracle, the maid
Would c