"
"And why, gentle forester, if she be so beautiful, and thou so
amorous, is there such a disagreement in thy thoughts? Happily she
resembleth the rose, that is sweet but full of prickles? or the
serpent Regius that hath scales as glorious as the sun and a breath as
infectious as the Aconitum is deadly? So thy Rosalynde may be most
amiable and yet unkind; full of favor and yet froward, coy without
wit, and disdainful without reason."
"O Shepherd," quoth Rosader, "knewest thou her personage, graced with
the excellence of all perfection, being a harbor wherein the graces
shroud their virtues, thou wouldest not breathe out such blasphemy
against the beauteous Rosalynde. She is a diamond, bright but not
hard, yet of most chaste operation; a pearl so orient,[1] that it can
be stained with no blemish; a rose without prickles, and a princess
absolute as well in beauty as in virtue. But I, unhappy I, have let
mine eye soar with the eagle against so bright a sun that I am quite
blind: I have with Apollo enamored myself of a Daphne, not, as she,
disdainful, but far more chaste than Daphne: I have with Ixion laid my
love on Juno, and shall, I fear, embrace nought but a cloud.
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