Part I. Flora and Phyllis
No. 28
In the spring-time, when the skies
Cast off winter’s mourning,
And bright flowers of every hue
Earth’s lap are adorning,
At the hour when Lucifer
Gives the stars their warning,
Phyllis woke, and Flora too,
In the early morning.
Both the girls were fain to go
Forth in sunny weather,
For love-laden bosoms throw
Sleep off like a feather;
Then with measured steps and slow
To the fields together
Went they, seeking pastime new
’Mid the flowers and heather.
Both were virgins, both, I ween,
Were by birth princesses;
Phyllis let her locks flow free,
Flora trained her tresses.
Not like girls they went, but like
Heavenly holinesses;
And their faces shone like dawn
’Neath the day’s caresses.
Equal beauty, equal birth,
These fair maidens mated;
Youthful were the years of both,
And their minds elated;
Yet they were a pair unpaired,
Mates by strife unmated;
For one loved a clerk, and one
For a knight was fated.
Naught there was of difference
’Twixt them to the seeing,
All alike, within without,
Seemed in them agreeing;
With one garb, one cast of mind,
And one mode of being,
Only that they could not love
Save with disagreeing.
In the tree-tops overhead
A spring breeze was blowing,
And the meadow lawns around
With green grass were growing;
Through the grass a rivulet
From the hill was flowing,
Lively, with a pleasant sound
Garrulously going.
That the girls might suffer less
From the noon resplendent,
Near the stream a spreading pine
Rose with stem ascendant;
Crowned with boughs and leaves aloft,
O’er the fields impendent;
From all heat on every hand
Airily defendent.
On the sward the maidens sat,
Naught that seat surpasses;
Phyllis near the rivulet,
Flora ’mid the grasses;
Each into the chamber sweet
Of her own soul passes,
Love divides their thoughts, and wounds
With his shafts the lasses.
Love within the breast of each,
Hidden, unsuspected,
Lurks and draws forth sighs of grief
From their hearts dejected:
Soon their ruddy cheeks grow pale,
Conscious, love-affected;
Yet their passion tells no tale,
By soft shame protected.
Phyllis now doth overhear
Flora softly sighing:
Flora with like luck detects
Sigh to sigh replying.
Thus the girls exchange the game,
Each with other vying;
Till the truth leaps out at length,
Plain beyond denying.
Long this interchange did last
Of mute conversation;
All of love-sighs fond and fast
Was that dissertation.
Love was in their minds, and Love
Made their lips his station;
Phyllis then, while Flora smiled,
Opened her oration.
“Soldier brave, my love!” she said,
“Where is now my Paris?
Fights he in the field, or where
In the wide word tarries?
Oh, the soldier’s life, I swear,
All life’s glory carries;
Only valour clothed in arms
With Dame Venus marries!”
Phyllis thus opens the question whether a soldier or a scholar be the fitter for love. Flora responds, and for some time they conduct the dispute in true scholastic fashion. Being unable to settle it between themselves, they resolve to seek out Love himself, and to refer the matter to his judgment. One girl mounts a mule, the other a horse; and these are no ordinary animals, for Neptune reared one beast as a present to Venus, Vulcan forged the metal-work of bit and saddle, Minerva embroidered the trappings, and so forth. After a short journey they reach the Garden of Love, which is described with a truly luxuriant wealth of imagery. It resembles some of the earlier Renaissance pictures, especially one of great excellence by a German artist which I once saw in a dealer’s shop at Venice, and which ought now to grace a public gallery.