"Why," quoth Aliena, "needs there patience in love?" "Or else in nothing," quoth Rosader; "for it is a restless sore that hath no ease, a canker that still frets, a disease that taketh away all hope of sleep. If then so many sorrows, sudden joys, momentary pleasures, continual fears, daily griefs, and nightly woes be found in love, then is not he to be accounted patient that smothers all these passions with silence?" "Thou speakest by experience," quoth Ganymede, "and therefore we hold all thy words for axioms. But is love such a lingering malady?" "It is," quoth he, "either extreme or mean, according to the mind of the party that entertains it; for, as the weeds grow longer untouched than the pretty flowers, and the flint lies safe in the quarry when the emerald is suffering the lapidary's tool, so mean men are freed from Venus' injuries, when kings are environed with a labyrinth of her cares. The whiter the lawn is, the deeper is the mole[1]; the more purer the chrysolite, the sooner stained; and such as have their hearts full of honor, have their loves full of the greatest sorrows. But in whomsoever," quoth Rosader, "he fixeth his dart, he never leaveth to assault him, till either he hath won him to folly or fancy; for as the moon never goes without the star Lunisequa, so a lover never goeth without the unrest of his thoughts. For proof you shall hear another fancy of my making." [Footnote 1: stain.] "Now do, gentle forester," quoth Ganymede; and with that he read over this sonetto: _Rosader's second Sonetto_ Turn I my looks unto the skies, Love with his arrows wounds mine eyes; If so I gaze upon the ground, Love then in every flower is found. Search I the shade to fly my pain, He meets me in the shade again; Wend I to walk in secret grove, Even there I meet with sacred Love. If so I bain[1] me in the spring, Even on the brink I hear him sing: If so I meditate alone, He will be partner of my moan. If so I mourn, he weeps with me, And where I am there will he be. Whenas I talk of Rosalynde The god from coyness waxeth kind, And seems in selfsame flames to fry Because he loves as well as I. Sweet Rosalynde, for pity rue; For why, than Love I am more true: He, if he speed, will quickly fly, But in thy love I live and die. [Footnote 1: bathe.] "How like you this sonnet?" quoth Rosader. "Marry," quoth Ganymede, "for the pen well, for the passion ill; for as I praise the one, I pity the other, in that thou shouldst hunt after a cloud, and love either without reward or regard."