Chapter I

Once in the gloaming, Fortune met me here;
Fair did she seem, and Love was on me laid,
Her hair was raised, as were it half a sphere,
Flowered on her breast a rose that cannot fade.
Then said I, "Fortune, thou without a peer,
What rule shall tell the measure of thine aid?"
"The pathway of the moon through all the year,
The channel of the exhaustless sea," she said.