Thinking still to pass
on by the by-ways to get to Lyons, they chanced on a path that led
into the thick of the forest, where they wandered five or six days
without meat, that they were almost famished finding neither shepherd
nor cottage to relieve them; and hunger growing on so extreme, Adam
Spencer, being old, began first to faint, and sitting him down on a
hill, and looking about him, espied where Rosader lay as feeble and as
ill perplexed: which sight made him shed tears, and to fall into these
bitter terms:
[Footnote 1: crowd.]
ADAM SPENCER'S SPEECH
"Oh, how the life of man may well be compared to the state of the
ocean seas, that for every calm hath a thousand storms, resembling the
rose tree, that for a few fair flowers hath a multitude of sharp
prickles! All our pleasures end in pain, and our highest delights are
crossed with deepest discontents. The joys of man, as they are few, so
are they momentary, scarce ripe before they are rotten, and withering
in the blossom, either parched with the heat of envy or fortune.
Fortune, O inconstant friend, that in all thy deeds art froward and
fickle, delighting, in the poverty of the lowest and the overthrow of
the highest, to decipher thy inconstancy.
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