40 'With this take Orgo, as a better spy,
Who may in all your kinder fears be sent
To watch at court, if I deserve to die
By making this to fade, and you lament.'
41 Had now an artful pencil Birtha drawn,
With grief all dark, then straight with joy all light,
He must have fancied first, in early dawn,
A sudden break of beauty out of night.
42 Or first he must have marked what paleness fear,
Like nipping frost, did to her visage bring;
Then think he sees, in a cold backward year,
A rosy morn begin a sudden spring.
43 Her joys, too vast to be contained in speech,
Thus she a little spake: 'Why stoop you down,
My plighted lord, to lowly Birtha's reach,
Since Rhodalind would lift you to a crown?
44 'Or why do I, when I this plight embrace,
Boldly aspire to take what you have given?
But that your virtue has with angels place,
And 'tis a virtue to aspire to heaven.
45 'And as towards heaven all travel on their knees,
So I towards you, though love aspire, will move:
And were you crowned, what could you better please
Then awed obedience led by bolder love?
46 'If I forget the depth from whence I rise,
Far from your bosom banished be my heart;
Or claim a right by beauty to your eyes;
Or proudly think my chastity desert.
47 'But thus ascending from your humble maid
To be your plighted bride, and then your wife,
Will be a debt that shall be hourly paid,
Till time my duty cancel with my life.
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