Epistulae

promote the object of your hopes. Thus far my epistle bears the secret message of my heart; but the betraying pen has tired my tender hand. The rest you will learn of Æthra and Clymene, my faithful companions and counsellors.

LEANDER of Abydos sends, to his girl of Sestos, those wishes for her health, which he would rather bring himself, if the rage of the sea should abate. If the Gods are favorable, and wish well to my love, you will run over this with discontented eyes. But they, alas! are far from being favorable. Why else are my hopes deferred? why am I forbidden to swim over the known seas? You

see that the heavens are dark as pitch; the billows swell with the wind, too fierce to be stemmed by the hollow ships. One mariner, more daring than the rest, who brings you this epistle, ventured to leave the harbour. Here I intended to embark, if, when he weighed anchor, all Abydos had not viewed us from the eminences. I could not, as before, have dissembled with my parents, and that love, which prudence requires us to conceal, would no longer have been unknown. Writing being now my only relief, I wrote: Go, said I, happy epistle! Soon, with a graceful smile, will she extend to thee her fair hand. Perhaps too thou mayest be pressed to her ruby lips, as with her ivory teeth she eagerly breaks the seals. After muttering this in gentle whispers, my ready right-hand quickly marked down the rest. How much would I rather it should dash through the swelling flood, than thus in languishing accents write my complaints! How much rather it should bear me sedulous though the well-known waves! Far better does it indeed serve to lash the foamming deep; yet it is no unfit minister of my warmest thoughts and wishes. It is now the seventh night (a space to me more tedious than a year) that the raging sea has tossed her

sounding billows. May the angry sea prolong her rage with ten-fold heat, if in all these lingering nights my distracted breast has tasted the sweets of soothing rest! Mounted on some rocky cliff, I pensive view the beloved shore, and am carried in thought whither I cannot convey myself in person. My eyes too behold, or seem to behold, upon the tower's top, the watchful light that is to guide my course. Thrice I stripped, and laid my clothes upon the dry sand; thrice I attempted, naked, the threatening watery way. But the swelling sea opposed my bold youthful attempts, and, as I swam, overwhelmed me with adverse waves. But you, North, the most inexorable of all the raging winds, why do you obstinately raise up against me a malicious opposition? If you are not already aware, know, that It is against me, and not the seas, that you thus terribly rage. What would you do, were you wholly a stranger to love? Cold as you are, perverse Boreas, you cannot deny that you were once warmed by Actæan fires. When keen to snatch the joys of love, had any one shut up the aërial way, how would you have taken it? Pity me then for heaven's sake, and blow more mildly the gentle gales: so may Æolus lay no harsh commands

upon you. In vain I beg: he murmurs and rages at my petitions, nor offers to smoothe the billows which he has so violently agitated. Oh that Dædalus would gift me with daring wings! the Icarian shore so near, causes no terror in me.