The next day as the three were at table Anselmo asked Lothario to recite something of what he had composed for his mistress Chloris; for as Camilla did not know her, he might safely say what he liked.
“Even did she know her,” returned Lothario, “I would hide nothing, for when a lover praises his lady’s beauty, and charges her with cruelty, he casts no imputation upon her fair name; at any rate, all I can say is that yesterday I made a sonnet on the ingratitude of this Chloris, which goes thus:
“At midnight, in the silence, when the eyes Of happier mortals balmy slumbers close, The weary tale of my unnumbered woes To Chloris and to Heaven is wont to rise.
And when the light of day returning dyes The portals of the east with tints of rose, With undiminished force my sorrow flows In broken accents and in burning sighs.
And when the sun ascends his star-girt throne, And on the earth pours down his midday beams, Noon but renews my wailing and my tears; And with the night again goes up my moan.
Yet ever in my agony it seems To me that neither Heaven nor Chloris hears.”
The sonnet pleased Camilla, and still more Anselmo, for he praised it and said the lady was excessively cruel who made no return for sincerity so manifest. On which Camilla said, “Then all that love-smitten poets say is true?”
“As poets they do not tell the truth,” replied Lothario; “but as lovers they are not more defective in expression than they are truthful.”