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In trance ecstatic may thy pangs be drown'd,
Bright clouds descend, and angels watch thee round;
From opening skies may streaming glories shine,
And saints embrace thee with a love like mine.
May one kind grave unite each hapless name,
And graft my love immortal on thy fame!
Then, ages hence, when all my woes are o'er,
When this rebellious heart shall beat no more;
If ever chance two wandering lovers brings
To Paraclete's white walls and silver springs,
O'er the pale marble shall they join their heads,
And drink the falling tears each other sheds;
Then sadly say, with mutual pity mov'd,
"O may we never love as these have lov'd "
From the full choir when loud hosannas rise,
And swell the pomp of dreadful sacrifice,
Amid that scene if some relenting eye

Glance on the stone where our cold relics lie,
Devotion's self shall steal a thought from heav'n,
One human tear shall drop, and be forgiv❜n.
And sure if fate some future bard shall join
In sad similitude of griefs to mine,

Condemn'd whole years in absence to deplore,
And image charms he must behold no more;
Such if there be, who loves so long, so well,
Let him our sad, our tender story tell;
The well-sung woes will sooth my pensive ghost;
He best can paint 'em who shall feel 'em most.

SAPPHO TO PHAON.

ARGUMENT.

Phaon, a youth of exquisite beauty, was deeply enamoured of Sappho, a lady of Lesbos, from whom he met with the tenderest returns of passion: but his affection afterwards decaying he left her, and sailed for Sicily. She unable to bear the loss of her lover, hearkened to all the mad suggestions of despair; and seeing no other remedy for her present miseries, resolved to throw herself into the sea, from Leucate, a promontory of Epirus, which was thought a cure in cases of obsti nate love, and therefore had obtained the name of the Lover's Leap. But before she ventured upon this last step, entertaining still some fond hopes that she might be able to reclaim her inconstant, she wrote him this Epistle; in which she gives him a strong picture of her distress and misery, occasioned by his absence; and endeavours, by all the artful insinuations and moving expressions she is the mistress of, to soothe him to softness and a mutual feeling-[Anon.]

SAY, lovely youth, that dost my heart command,

Can Phaon's eyes forget his Sappho's hand?
Must then her name the wretched writer prove,
To thy remembrance lost, as to thy love?
Ask not the cause that I new numbers choose,
The lute neglected, and the lyric muse;
Love taught my tears in sadder notes to flow,
And tun'd my heart to elegies of woe.

I burn, I burn, as when through ripen'd corn
By driving winds the spreading flames are borne!
Phaon to Etna's scorching fields retires,

While I consume with more than Etna's fires!

So from my birth the sisters fix'd my doom,
And gave to Venus all my life to come;
Or, while my Muse in melting notes complains,
My yielding heart keeps measure to my strains.
By charms like thine which all my soul have won,
Who might not-ah! who would not be undone ?
For those Aurora Cephalus might scorn,

And with fresh blushes paint the conscious morn.
For those might Cynthia lengthen Phaon's sleep,
And bid Endymion nightly tend his sheep.
Venus for those had rapt thee to the skies;
But Mars on thee might look with Venus' eyes.
O scarce a youth, yet scarce a tender boy!
O useful time for lovers to employ !

Pride of thy age, and glory of thy race,

Come to these arms, and melt in this embrace!
The vows you never will return, receive;
And take, at least, the love you will not give.
See, while I write, my words are lost in tears!
The less my sense, the more my love appears.
Sure 'twas not much to bid one kind adieu,
(At least to feign was never hard to you)
"Farewell, my Lesbian love," you might have said;
Or coldly thus, " Farewell, O Lesbian maid !"

No tear did you, no parting kiss receive,
Nor knew I then how much I was to grieve.
No lover's gift your Sappho could confer,
And wrongs and woes were all you left with her.
No charge I gave you, and no charge could give,
But this, "Be mindful of our loves, and live."
Now by the Nine, those pow'rs ador'd by me,
And Love, the god that ever waits on thee,
When first I heard (from whom I hardly knew)
That you were fled, and all my joys with you,
Like some sad statue, speechless, pale, I stood,
Grief chill'd my breast, and stopt my freezing blood;
No sigh to rise, no tear had pow'r to flow,

Fix'd in a stupid lethargy of woe:

But when its way the' impetuous passion found, rend my tresses, and my breast I wound ;

I rave, then weep; I curse, and then complain;
Now swell to rage, now melt in tears again.
Not fiercer pangs distract the mournful dame,
Whose first-born infant feeds the funeral flame.
My scornful brother with a smile appears,
Insults my woes, and triumphs in my tears,
His hated image ever haunts my eyes;
"And why this grief? thy daughter lives," he cries.
Stung with my love, and furious with despair,
All torn my garments, and my bosom bare,
My woes, thy crimes, I to the world proclaim,
Such inconsistent things are love and shame!
'Tis thou art all my care and my delight,
My daily longing, and my dream by night:
O night more pleasing than the brightest day,
When fancy gives what absence takes away,
And, dress'd in all its visionary charms,
Restores my fair deserter to my arms!

Then round your neck in wanton wreaths I twine,
Then you, methinks, as fondly circle mine:
A thousand tender words I hear and speak;

A thousand melting kisses give and take:
Then fiercer joys I blush to mention these,
Yet, while I blush, confess how much they please.
But when, with day, the sweet delusions fly,

And all things wake to life and joy but I,

As if once more forsaken, I complain,
And close my eyes to dream of you again :
Then frantic rise, and like some fury rove
Thro' lonely plains, and thro' the silent grove;
As if the silent grove, and lonely plains,
That knew my pleasures, could relieve my pains.
I view the grotto, once the scene of love,

The rocks around, the hanging roofs above,
That charm'd me more, with native moss o'ergrown,
Than Phrygian marble, or the Parian stone:
I find the shades that veil'd our joys before;
But, Phaon gone, these shades delight no more.
Here the press'd herbs with bending tops betray
Where oft entwin'd in amorous folds we lay;

I kiss that earth which once was press'd by you,
And all with tears the withering herbs bedew.
For thee the fading trees appear to mourn,
And birds defer their songs till thy return:
Night shades the groves, and all in silence lie,
All but the mournful Philomel and I:
With mournful Philomel I join my strain,
Of Tereus she, of Phaon I complain.

A spring there is, whose silver waters show,
Clear as a glass, the shining sands below:
A flowery lotos spreads its arms above,
Shades all the banks, and seems itself a grove ;
Eternal greens the mossy margin grace,
Watch'd by the silvan genius of the place.
Here as I lay, and swell'd with tears the flood,
Before my sight a watery virgin stood :

She stood and cry'd, "O you that love in vain!
Fly hence, and seek the fair Leucadian main ;
There stands a rock, from whose impending steep
Apollo's fane surveys the rolling deep;
There injur'd lovers, leaping from above,
Their flames extinguish, and forget to love.
Deucalion once with hopeless fury burn'd,
In vain he lov'd, relentless Pyrrha scorn'd:
But when from hence he plung'd into the main,
Deucalion scorn'd, and Pyrrha lov'd in vain.
Haste, Sappho, haste, from high Leucadia throw
Thy wretched weight, nor dread the deeps below!”
She spoke, and vanish'd with the voice-I rise,
And silent tears fall trickling from my eyes.
I go, ye nymphs! those rocks and seas to prove ;
How much I fear, but ah, how much I love!
I go, ye nymphs! where furious love inspires;
Let female fears submit to female fires.
To rocks and seas I fly from Phaon's hate,
And hope from seas and rocks a milder fate.
Ye gentle gales, beneath my body blow,
And softly lay me on the waves below!
And thou, kind Love, my sinking limbs sustain,
Spread thy soft wings, and waft me o'er the main,
Nor let a lover's death the guiltless flood profane!

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