CES. Prithee, let us read the sonnet, so that we may consider the sense
of it in due order with propriety and brevity.
MAR. It says thus:--
54.
She who my mind to other love did move,
To whom all others vile and vain appear,
In whom alone is sovereign beauty seen,
And excellence Divine is manifest.
She from the forest coming, I beheld,
Huntress of myself, beloved Artemis,
'Midst beauteous nymphs, with air of nascent bells.
Then said I unto Love: See, I am hers.
And he to me: Oh, happy lover thou!
Delectable companion of thy fate!
That she alone of all the numberless,
That hold within their bosom life and death,
Who most with virtues high the world adorns,
Thou didst obtain, through will and destiny,
Within the Court of Love.
So happy thou in thy captivity
Thou enviest not the liberty of man or God.
See how contented he is under that yoke, that marriage which has joined
him to her whom he saw issuing from the forest, from the desert, from
the woods, that is, from parts removed from the crowd, and from the
conversation of the vulgar who have but small enlightenment. Diana, the
splendour of the intelligible species, and huntress; because with her
beauty and grace she first wounded him, and then bound him and holds him
in her power, more contented than otherwise he could possibly have been.
He speaks of her "amidst beauteous nymphs," that is, the multitude of
other species, forms and ideas, and "air of bells," that is the genius
and the spirit which displayed itself at Nola, which lies on the plain
of the Campanian horizon.
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