And he himself himself loath'd so forlorn,
So shamefully forlorn of womankind,
That, as a snake, still lurked in his wounded mind.

Still fled he forward, looking backward still;
Nor stay'd his flight nor fearful agony
Till that he came unto a rocky hill
Over the sea suspended dreadfully,
That living creature it would terrify
To look a-down, or upward to the height
From thence he threw himself dispiteously,
All desperate of his fore-damned spright,
That seem'd no help for him was left in living sight.

But through long anguish and self-murd'ring thought,
He was so wasted and forpined quite,
That all his substance was consumed to nought,
And nothing left but like an airy sprite;
That on the rocks he fell so flit and light,
That he thereby received no hurt at all;
But chanced on a craggy cliff to light;
Whence he with crooked claws so long did crawl,
That at the last he found a cave with entrance small.

Into the same he creeps, and thenceforth there
Resolved to build his baleful mansion,
In dreary darkness, and continual fear
Of that rock's fall, which ever and anon
Threats with huge ruin him to fall upon,
That he dare never sleep, but that one eye
Still ope he keeps for that occasion;
Nor ever rests he in tranquillity,
The roaring billows beat his bower so boisterously.

Nor ever is he wont on aught to feed
But toads and frogs, his pasture poisonous,
Which in his cold complexion do breed
A filthy blood, or humour rancorous,
Matter of doubt and dread suspicious,
That doth with cureless care consume the heart,
Corrupts the stomach with gall vicious,
Cross-cuts the liver with internal smart,
And doth transfix the soul with death's eternal dart.

Yet can he never die, but dying lives,
And doth himself with sorrow new sustain,
That death and life at once unto him gives,
And painful pleasure turns to pleasing pain;
There dwells he ever, miserable swain,
Hateful both to himself and every wight;
Where he, through privy grief and horror vain,
Is waxen so deformed, that he has quite
Forgot he was a man, and Jealousy is hight."

Spenser's picture is more subtly wrought and imaginative than Ariosto's;
but it removes the man farther from ourselves, except under very special
circumstances. Indeed, it might be taken rather for a picture of