Chapter 5
The Disappointment by Afroben Read for LibriVox.org by Maria Rubello One day the Amaris Lassander by an impatient passion suede Surprised fair Cloris that loved maid Who could defend herself no longer
All things did with his love conspire The gilded planet of the day And his gay chariot drawn by fire Was now defending to the sea And left no light to guide the world
But what from Cloris' brighter eyes was furled In a lone thicket made for love Silent as yielding maid's consent She with a charming languishment Permits his force yet gently strove
Her hands, his possums softly meet But not to put him back to sand Rather to draw him uninclined Oost he lay trembling at her feet Resistance distillate to shoo
She wants the power to say, ah, what do you do Her bright eyes sweat and yet severe Where love and shame confusedly strive Fresh vigor to Lassander give And whispering softly in his ear
She cried cease, cease your vain desire Or I'll call out, what would you do My dear honor even to you I cannot, must not give, retire Or take that life whose chiefest part
I gave to you with the conquest of my heart But he as much unused to fear As he was capable of love The blessed minutes to improve Kisses her lips, her neck, her hair
Each touch her new desires alarms Her burning trembling hand he pressed Upon her smelting, gnoey breast While she lay panting in his arms All her unguarded beauties lie
The spoils and trophies of the enemy And now without respect or fear He seeks the objects of his vows His love no modesty allows By swift degrees advancing
Were his daring hand that alters seized Where gods of love do sacrifice The awful throne, that paradise Where rage is tamed and anger pleased That living fountain, from whose trills
The melted soul and liquid drops the stills Her balmy lips, encountering his Their bodies as souls are joined Where both in transports were confined Extend themselves upon the moss
Chlorous half dead and breathlessly Her eyes appeared like humid light Such as divides the day and night Or falling stars, whose fires decay And now no signs of life she shows
But when in short breath sized her turns and goes He saw how at her length she lay He saw her rising bossam bare Her loose thin robes, through which appear A shape designed for love and play
Abandoned by her pride and shame She do's her softest sweets dispense Offering her virgin innocence A victim to love's sacred flame Will store ravished shepherd lies
Unable to perform the sacrifice Ready to taste a thousand joys The too transported hapless swain Found the vast pleasure turned to pain Pleasure which too much love destroys
The willing garments by he laid And heaven all open to his view Mad to possess, himself he threw On the defenceless lovely maid But oh what envious gods conspired
To snatch his power, yet live from the desire Nature's support, without whose aid She can no humane being give Itself now wants the art to live Faintness and slackened nerves invade
Invade the enraged youth to save To call his fleeting bigger back No motion, twill from the motion take Excessive love his love betrayed Invane he toils, in vain commands
This insensible fell weeping in his hands And this so amorous cruel strife Where love and fate were too severe The poor Lysander in despair Renounced his reason with his life
Now all the brisk and active fire That should the nobler part inflame Unactive frigid doll became And left no spark for new desire Not all her naked charms could move
Or calm that rage that had to bouch his love Chlorous returning from the trance Which love and soft desire had bred Her timorous hand she gently laid Were guided by designer chance
Upon the fabulous triadless That potent god as poet's fame But never did young shepherdess Gathering a fern upon the plain More nimbly draw her fingers back
Finding beneath the verdant leaves a snake Then Chlorous her fair hand withdrew Finding that god of her desires Disarmed all his powerful fires And cold as flowers bathed in the morning dew
Who can the nymph's confusion guess? The blood forsook the kinder place And strewed with blushes all her face Which both disdain and shame express And from Lysander's arms she fled
Leaving him fainting in the gloomy bed A delighting through the grove she eyes And daft me from the Delphic god No print upon the grassy road she leaves To instruct pursuing eyes
The wind that wantoned in her hair And with her ruffled garments played Discovered in the flying maid All that the gods are made of fair So Venus, when her love was slain
With fear or haste flew over the fatal plain The nymph's resentments none but I Can well imagine and condole But none can guess Lysander's soul But those who swayed his destiny
His silent griefs swell up to storms And not one god his fury spares He crossed this birth, his fate, his stars But more the shepherdess' charms Whose soft bewitching influence
Had damned him to the hell of impotence End of poem. This recording is in the public domain.
