should not my sepulchre receive me without some contentment. But alas! though sure I am that Zelmane is such as can answer my love, yet as sure I am that this disguising must needs come for some foretaken conceit: and then wretched Gynecia where canst thou find any small ground-plot for hope to dwell upon? no, no, it is Philoclea his heart is set upon; it is my daughter I have borne to supplant me. But if it be so, the life I have given thee, ungrateful Philoclea, I will sooner with these hands bereave thee of than my birth shall glory she hath bereaved me of my desires: in shame there is no comfort, but to be beyond all bounds of shame.” Having spoken thus, she began to make a piteous war in her fair hair; when she might hear, not far from her, an extremely doleful voice, but so suppressed with a kind of whispering note that she could not conceive the words distinctly. But, as a lamentable tune is the sweetest music to a woeful mind, she drew thither near-way in hope to find some companion of her misery; and as she paced on, she was stopped with a number of trees, so thickly placed together that she was afraid she should, with rushing through, stop the speech of the lamentable party which she was so desirous to understand: and therefore sitting her down as softly as she could, for she was now in distance to hear, she might first perceive a lute excellently well played upon, and then the same doleful voice accompanying it with these verses: In vain mine eyes you labour to amend With flowing tears your fault of hasty sight: Since to my heart her shape you did so send, That her I see, though you did lose your light. {123} In vain my heart, now you with sight are burn’d, With sighs you seek to cool your hot desire: Since sighs, into mine inward furnace turn’d, For bellows serve to kindle more the fire. Reason in vain, now you have lost my heart, My head you seek, as to your strongest fort: Since there mine eyes have play’d so false a part, That to your strength your foes have sure resort. Then since in vain I find were all my strife, To this strange death I vainly yield my life.