So first he tells him how a lovely maid
Had begged him to convey Medoro home.
With precious herbs his bleeding she had stayed.
In a few days his wounds had healed; but from
His health a deeper wound in her Love made.
A spark an eager flame had soon become,
Which now consumed her with so fierce a fire,
She yearned for him with amorous desire.

Regardless of her royal status as
The daughter of the greatest of all kings
Of the Levant, although Medoro has
The rank of common soldier, yet she clings
To him and wants him only for her spouse.
When to its end the narrative he brings,
The shepherd shows the Count the precious gem
Which fair Angelica had given him.

This was the axe which at one final blow
His head then severed from Orlando's neck,
For Love the Slaughterer was sated now
With endless batterings; though at this wreck
Of all his hopes Orlando, not to show
His grief, all signs of it attempts to check,
Yet willy-nilly from his mouth and eyes
Sorrow comes flooding forth in tears and sighs.

When he can give his sorrow fuller rein,
Fleeing all others, in his room alone,
The tears run streaming down his cheeks like rain.
Sigh follows upon sigh and groan on groan.
Fumbling and groping for his bed, in vain,
He seeks relief; harder than any stone,
Sharper than nettles, is that downy nest
Whereon Orlando never can find rest.

Then in his travail suddenly he knows
That in this very bed on which he lies
His love has lain, and often, in the close
Embrace that nothing of herself denies.
No less abhorrence now Orlando shows
And no less quickly from that couch he flies
Than we may see a startled peasant leap
Who spies a snake where he lay down to sleep.

The bed, the house, the shepherd he now hated.
His one desire was but to get away.
Not for the moon, not for the dawn he waited,
Not for the streaks of white which herald day.
His arms, his horse he first appropriated
And where the forest's heart of darkness lay
Shrouded in densest foliage, he rode
And to his grief gave vent in solitude.