Scholium

A modern-day rendering could be: “he proportions his life to the four seasons of the year, comparing his youth to the spring time, when he was fresh and free from love's folly. His manhood to the summer, which he said, was consumed with great heat and excessive drought caused through a Comet of blazing star, by which he means love, whose passion is commonly compared to such fl ames and immoderate heat …”

The emotions of shepherd Colin in “The Shepheardes Calender” [sic] where we read “Colin cloute a shepheardes boy complaineth him of his vnfortunate loue, being but newly (as semeth) enamoured of a countrie lasse called Rosalinde … fynding himselfe robbed of all former pleasaunce and delights, hee breaketh his Pipe in peeces [sic] …” (The reader is referred to Figure 185 for the accompanying woodcut illustration — over 400 years old — showing Colin's Pipe lying in pieces on the ground.)