'Through me you pass into the city of woe:...
Such characters in colour dim, I mark'd
Over a portal's lofty arch inscribed.'
See also l. 134. The gate is the entrance into Love, which is to some a
blessing, and to some a curse; see ll. 158, 159. Thus _men gon_ is,
practically, equivalent to 'some men go'; and so in l. 134. The idea is
utterly different from that of the _two_ gates in Vergil, Æn. vi. 893. The
successful lover finds 'the well of Favour,' l. 129. The unsuccessful one
encounters the deadly wounds caused by the spear (or dart) guided to his
heart by Disdain and Power-to-harm (Daunger); for him, the opened garden
bears no fruit, and the alluring stream leads him only to a fatal weir,
wherein imprisoned fish are left lying dry.
Cf. 'As why this fish, and nought that, comth to were';
Troil. iii. 35.
140. 'Avoiding it is the only remedy.' This is only another form of a
proverb which also occurs as 'Well fights he who well flies.' See Proverbs
of Hending (in Spec. of English), l. 77; Owl and Nightingale, l. 176. Sir
T. Wiat has--'The first eschue is remedy alone'; Spec. of Eng. Part III. p.
235. Probably from the Roman de la Rose, l. 16818--'Sol foïr en est
medicine.' (O.F. _foir_ = Lat. _fugere_.)
141. The alluring message (ll. 127-133) was written in gold; the forbidding
one (ll. 134-140) in black; see Anglia, xiv. 235.
142. _A stounde_, for a while (rightly); the reading _astonied_ is to be
rejected. The attitude is one of deliberation.