Orlando has settled down to life in the forest, but he cannot get Rosalind out of his mind. He is terribly lovesick; and like any person who is hopelessly and madly in love, he is irrational. And, so, like the young shepherd Silvius, he behaves foolishly.
Orlando is thus going from tree to tree hanging a love poem on each. Thus each tree is a declaration of his love. Each tree is a tribute to Rosalind. Orlando’s speech – a soliloquy actually – of ten lines appropriately forms a love poem itself (note the rhyme scheme: ABAB CDCD EE). Orlando invokes the goddess Diana, the “queen of night” (mythological allusion: line 2). Diana wears three crowns because she is the goddess of the moon, of hunting, and of chastity. Orlando makes his appeal to the moon in the night sky; but as Diana is also the goddess of chastity, Rosalind becomes her follower or “huntress” (4). Orlando is thus declaring that Rosalind is virtuous as well as beautiful. And that is the goal of the love poet: to praise both the beauty and the virtue of the woman whom he adores.