What more I have to say will lie compris'dIn little room, but must not be despis'd.Those short receipts have cures on many done,And of that number, I myself am one.The letters sent you when your nymph was kind,Revise not, for they'll shake your constant mind:But say, when you commit them to the fire,"Be this the fun'ral pile of my desire;Perish, my love, in this just flame expire."Althaea burnt the fatal brand, and knew,The brand consuming, her own son she slew.Althaea the wife of Oeneus king of Calydonia, and mother of Meleager, who hearing all her other sons were killed in a sedition, in a fit of fury flung the brand into the fire upon which the fate of Meleager depended, and then stabbed or hanged herself.Can you whose kindness had a worse returnRepine, a few deceitful words to burn!No: make a total sacrifice, nor spareThe very seal that does her image bear.From all such places too you must remove,As ever have been conscious to your love.You'll say, (and grieve to think those joys are fled)This was th' apartment, this the happy bed!The dear remembrance will renew desire,And to fresh blaze blow up the sleeping fire.The Greeks could wish t' have shun'd th' Eubaean coast,Nauplius king of Euboea and Seriphas, the father of Palamedes, to revenge the death of his son, set up a watch-light upon a promontory, which the Greeks being overtaken in a storm, took for a signal of a safe landing place, and so fell in among the rocks, as Nauplius intended; but finding Ulysses had escaped, in a rage he threw himself into the sea. These light are now used to show where these rocks lie, and not where there are none.And vengeful fire by which their fleet was lost.Wise sailors tack, when Scylla's rock they spy;Scylla daughter of Nisus. She was changed into a rock near Charybdis, in the Sicilian straits: or, as others say, in the straits of Megara: but it is controverted whether she was the same who was metamorphosed into a rock or not. There were two Scyllas, and the poets confounded one with another. It is said that Scylla, daughter of Nisus, falling in love with Minos, who had besieged Megara, of which her father was king, she cut off that lock of hair upon which his strength and fortune depended; and the city being taken, she was turned into an osprey. Minos afterwards slighting Scylla, she died of despair, and was meatamorphosed into a lark. The other Scylla was the daughter of Phareus, who, according to the fable, was changed into a monster whose lower parts were dogs which never ceased barking. But we see the greatesst of the ancient poets confounded the one fable with the other.So you should from your mistress' dwelling fly,There stands the rock, on which you split before,Imagine there you hear Charybdis roar.Servius tells us she was a gluttonous woman, who having stolen Hercules' oxen, was thunderstruck by Jupiter and thrown headlong into the sea, where she keeps still her natural disposition of devouring all things. This rock lies over against Zanclea in Sicily, at the entrance of the straits of Messina, from whence she is called Zanclaea. Strabo writes the rock is prodigiously hollow.But chance itself sometimes may stand your friend,And give your griefs an unexpected end.Had Phaedra's wealth to poverty declin'd.She never for Hippolitus had pin'd.Or were Medea born a rural maid,No faithless Jason had implor'd her aid.But love in pamper'd palaces is bred,By pleasure and luxurious riches fed.Not Hecale or Irus could arriveHecale was a poor old woman who entertained Theseus at her cottage in one of his enterprises; and Irus one of Penelope's suitors, who being extremely poor, was almost starved, and so weak that Ulysses knocked him on the head with his fist. Irus's poverty occasioned the proverb Iro pauperior. He iks also spoken of in the epistle from Penelope to Ulysses (Ep. 1.95).At Hymen's joys, though long they did survive,For both were poor: and Cupid still shoots high,His shafts above the humble cottage fly.Yet so severe a cure I can't approve,Or bid you starve yourself, to starve your love.