XXXI.
[Who can recount the vertues of my deare]
There needeth no annotation at all before this Passion, it is of
it selfe so plaine, and easilye conuayed. Yet the vnlearned
may haue this helpe geuen them by the way to know what
Galaxia is, or Pactolus, which perchaunce they haue not read
off often in our vulgar Rimes. Galaxia (to omit both the Etimologie
and what the Philosophers doe write thereof) is a
white way or milky Circle in the heauens, which Ouid mentioneth
in this manner.
Est via sublimis cœlo manifesta sereno,
Lactea nomen habet, candore notabilis ipso.
And Cicero thus in somnio Scipionis; Erat autem is splendidissimo candore
inter flammas circulus elucens, quena vos (vt a Graijs accepistis)
orbem lacteum nuncupatis.
Pactolus is a riuer in Lidia, which hath golden sandes vnder it, as Tibullus witnesseth in this verse,
Nec me regna iuuant, nec Lydius aurifer amnis.
Who
can recount the vertues of my deare,
Or say how farre her fame hath taken flight,
That can not tell how many starres appeare
In part of heau'n, which Galaxia hight,
Or number all the moates in Phebus rayes,
Or golden sandes, whereon Pactolus playes?
And yet my hurts enforce me to confesse,
In crystall breast she shrowdes a bloudy hart,
Which hart in time will make her merits lesse,
Unlesse betimes she cure my deadly smart:
For nowe my life is double dying still,
And she defam'de by suffrance of such ill;
And till the time she helpes me as she may,
Let no man vndertake to tell my toyle,
But onely suche, as can distinctly say,
What Monsters Nilus breedes, or Affricke soyle:
For if he doe, his labour is but lost,
Whilst I both frie and freeze twixt flame and frost.
