It is Britomart, a virgin and a heroine, like Clorinda or Marfisa,[366] but how much more ideal! The deep sentiment of nature, the sincerity of reverie, the ever-flowing fertility of inspiration, the German seriousness, reanimate in this poem classical or chivalrous conceptions, even when they are the oldest or the most trite. The train of splendors and of scenery never ends. Desolate promontories, cleft with gaping chasms; thunder-stricken and blackened masses of rocks, against which the hoarse breakers dash; palaces sparkling with gold, wherein ladies, beauteous as angels, reclining carelessly on purple cushions, listen with sweet smiles to the harmony of music played by unseen hands; lofty silent walks, where avenues of oaks spread their motionless shadows over clusters of virgin violets, and turf which never mortal foot has trod; to all these beauties of art and nature he adds the marvels of mythology, and describes them with as much of love and sincerity as a painter of the Renaissance or an ancient poet. Here approach on chariots of shell, Cymoënt and her nymphs: "A teme of dolphins raunged in aray Drew the smooth charett of sad Cymoënt; They were all taught by Triton to obay To the long raynes at her commaundëment: As swifte as swallowes on the waves they went, That their brode flaggy finnes no fome did reare, Ne bubling rowndell they behinde them sent; The rest, of other fishes drawen weare; Which with their finny oars the swelling sea did sheare."[367] Nothing, again, can be sweeter or calmer than the description of the palace of Morpheus: "He, making speedy way through spersed ayre, And through the world of waters wide and deepe. To Morpheus house doth hastily repaire. Amid the bowels of the earth full steepe, And low, where dawning day doth never peepe His dwelling is; there Tethys his wet bed Doth ever wash, and Cynthia still doth steepe In silver deaw his ever-drouping hed, Whiles sad Night over him her mantle black doth spred. And, more to lulle him in his slumber soft, A trickling streame from high rock tumbling downe And ever-drizzling raine upon the loft, Mixt with a murmuring winde, much like the sowne Of swarming bees, did cast him in a swowne. No other noyse, nor peoples troublous cryes, As still are wont t' annoy the walled towne, Might there be heard: but careless Quiet lyes, Wrapt in eternall silence farre from enimyes."