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C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Clorinda’s Eunuch Narrates her History

By Torquato Tasso (1544–1595)

From ‘Jerusalem Delivered’: Translation of Jeremiah Holmes Wiffen

IN former days o’er Ethiopia reigned—

Haply perchance reigns still—Senapo brave;

Who with his dusky people still maintained

The laws which Jesus to the nations gave:

’Twas in his court, a pagan and a slave,

I lived, o’er thousand maids advanced to guard,

And wait with authorized assumption grave

On her whose beauteous brows the crown instarred;

True, she was brown, but naught the brown her beauty marred.

The king adored her, but his jealousies

Equaled the fervors of his love; the smart

At length of sharp suspicion by degrees

Gained such ascendance in his troubled heart,

That from all men in closest bowers apart

He mewed her, where e’en heaven’s chaste eyes, the bright

Stars, were but half allowed their looks to dart:

Whilst she, meek, wise, and pure as virgin light,

Made her unkind lord’s will her rule and chief delight.

Hung was her room with storied imageries

Of martyrs and of saints: a virgin here,

On whose fair cheeks the rose’s sweetest dyes

Glowed, was depicted in distress; and near,

A monstrous dragon, which with poignant spear

An errant knight transfixing, prostrate laid:

The gentle lady oft with many a tear

Before this painting meek confession made

Of secret faults, and mourned, and heaven’s forgiveness prayed.

Pregnant meanwhile, she bore (and thou wert she)

A daughter white as snow: th’ unusual hue,

With wonder, fear, and strange perplexity

Disturbed her, as though something monstrous too;

But as by sad experience well she knew

His jealous temper and suspicious haste,

She cast to hide thee from thy father’s view;

For in his mind (perversion most misplaced!)

Thy snowy chasteness else had argued her unchaste.

And in thy cradle to his sight exposed

A negro’s new-born infant for her own;

And as the tower wherein she lived inclosed

Was kept by me and by her maids alone,—

To me whose firm fidelity was known,

Who loved and served her with a soul sincere,—

She gave thee, beauteous as a rose unblown,

Yet unbaptized; for there, it would appear,

Baptized thou couldst not be in that thy natal year.

Weeping she placed thee in my arms, to bear

To some far spot: what tongue can tell the rest!

The plaints she used; and with what wild despair

She clasped thee to her fond maternal breast;

How many times ’twixt sighs, ’twixt tears caressed;

How oft, how very oft, her vain adieu

Sealed on thy cheek; with what sweet passion pressed

Thy little lips! At length a glance she threw

To heaven, and cried:—“Great God, that look’st all spirits through!

“If both my heart and members are unstained,

And naught did e’er my nuptial bed defile,

(I pray not for myself; I stand arraigned

Of thousand sins, and in thy sight am vile,)

Preserve this guiltless infant, to whose smile

The tenderest mother must refuse her breast,

And from her eyes their sweetest bliss exile!

May she with chastity like mine be blessed;

But stars of happier rule have influence o’er the rest!

“And thou, blest knight, that from the cruel teeth

Of the grim dragon freed’st that holy maid,

Lit by my hands if ever odorous wreath

Rose from thy altars; if I e’er have laid

Thereon gold, cinnamon, or myrrh, and prayed

For help,—through every chance of life display,

In guardianship of her, thy powerful aid!”

Convulsions choked her words; she swooned away,

And the pale hues of death on her chill temples lay.

With tears I took thee in a little ark

So hid by flowers and leaves that none could guess

The secret; brought thee forth ’twixt light and dark,

And unsuspected, in a Moorish dress,

Passed the town walls. As through a wilderness

Of forests horrid with brown glooms I took

My pensive way, I saw, to my distress,

A tigress issuing from a bosky nook,

Rage in her scowling brows, and lightning in her look.

Wild with affright, I on the flowery ground

Cast thee, and instant climbed a tree close by:

The savage brute came up, and glancing round

In haughty menace, saw where thou didst lie;

And softening to a mild humanity

Her stern regard, with placid gestures meek,

As by thy beauty smit, came courteous nigh;

In amorous pastime fawning licked thy cheek;

And thou on her didst smile, and stroke her mantle sleek.

With her fierce muzzle and her cruel front

Thy little hands did innocently play;

She offered thee her teats, as is the wont

With nurses, and adapted them, as they,

To thy young lips; nor didst thou turn away:

She suckled thee! a prodigy so new

Filled me with fresh confusion and dismay.

She, when she saw thee satisfied, withdrew

Into the shady wood, and vanished from my view.

Again I took thee, and pursued my way

Through woods, and vales, and wildernesses dun:

Till in a little village making stay,

I gave thee secretly in charge to one

Who fondly nursed thee till the circling sun,

With sixteen months of equatorial heat,

Had tinged thy face; till thou too hadst begun

To prattle of thy joys in murmurs sweet,

And print her cottage floor with indecisive feet.