Musidorus enters the service of Dametas in the character of a shepherd. The story which is unrolled in the remainder of the work relates the extraordinary occurrences which are necessary to the fulfilment of the Delphian prophecy, together with the intrigues and adventures of the young lovers. Shipwrecks, attacks by pirates, rescues, journeys through Arcadia among poetic shepherds, a war with the Helots, through forests and carving sonnets on trees,--such are the scenes which succeed each other with unending variety. On the arrival of Pyrocles and Musidorus in Arcadia, the reader is introduced to that ideal land, never more happily described than by Sidney's pen[70]: The third day after, in the time that the Morning did strow roses and violets in the heavenly floore against the comming of the sunne, the Nightingales, (striving one with the other which could in most daintie varietie recount their wrong caused sorrow,) made them put off their sleepe, and rising from under a tree, (which that night had bin their pavillion,) they went on their journey, which by and by welcomed Musidorus eies (wearied with the wasted soile of Laconia) with delightfull prospects. There were hills which garnished their proud heights with stately trees: humble vallies, whose base estate seemed comforted with the refreshing of silver rivers: medowes, enameled with all sorts of eie pleasing flowers; thickets, which being lined with most pleasant shade, were witnessed so too, by the cheerfull disposition of manie well tuned birds: each pasture stored with sheep feeding with sober securitie, while the prettie lambes with bleating oratorie craved the dammes comfort: here a shepheards boy piping, as though he should never be old: there a young shepheardesse knitting, and withall singing, and it seemed that her voice comforted her hands to worke, and her hands kept time to her voice's musick. As for the houses of the country, (for manie houses came under their eye,) they were all scattered, no two being one by th' other, and yet not so farre off as that it barred mutuall succour: a shew, as it were, of an accompanable solitarinesse, and of a civill wildeness. Amid such scenes dwell Basilius and his wife, whose two daughters are described by Sidney in language unsurpassed for delicacy and charm.