Epistulae

plunge secure into a calm inviting sea; provided only you are unalterably the same, provided you love with the same ardor with which you write, and this noble flame never changes into cold lifeless ashes. I am not so much afraid of the winds that disappoint my earnest wishes, as of your love, that it may prove, like the wind, changeable and inconstant. I fear the not being held in the same esteem; that the dangers may be thought greater than the reward, or that I am accounted too mean a recompence of your toil. Sometimes I am uneasy, from an idea that my country may detract from me, and that a Thracian girl may seem an unequal match for a citizen of Abydos. Yet I can patiently bear any affliction whatever, sooner than the apprehension of your being detained by another flame. Ah! let me rather perish, than suffer under so cruel a distress; may fate end my days before I hear of the dreadful crime!

Nor do I mention this from any reason you give me to suspect approaching grief, or because I am alarmed by some new spreading rumor. But I am subject to every fear; (for when did love yet settle in a quiet mind?) distance and absence feed my anxious thoughts. Happy they, who, always together, know at once what they have to fear, nor feel the piercing grief of false alarms. We are as much disturbed by unjust fears, as ignorant of real injuries; and each error begets equal anxiety.

Oh how I wish that you were here, that either the winds or your parents, and no rival fair, may be the cause of your long stay! For, believe me, to hear of a rival would kill me with grief; and it is now long that you have been in fault, if you thus aim at my destruction. But you are not in fault: these my terrors I know are groundless; the envious winds alone oppose your desired approach. Dreadful! how the shores are lashed by the vast billows! How the day is hidden by gathering clouds! Perhaps

the disconsolate mother of Helle hovers over the deep, and her unhappy daughter is lamented in distilling drops. Or does her step-mother, changed into a sea-goddess, deform the channel that bears the hated name of her daughter-in-law? This sea, such as it is now, is far from being propitious to tender maids. Here Helle perished: I also am crossed by these obstinate waves. But you surely, Neptune, if you call to mind your many flames, can never be an enemy to gentle love; if neither Amymone, nor Tyro of exquisite form, are vain rumours of your guilt; if fair Alcyone, Circe, and the daughter of Alymone;

Medusa (her hair not yet wreathed with serpents), blooming Laodice, and Celæno ranked among the stars, with many other names I remember to have read, were ever dear to you. These, Neptune, with many more, are sung by the poets to have lain in your embraces. Why then, having yourself so often felt the power of love, do you shut up the accustomed way by rough whirlwinds? Be mild, stern father, and reserve your tumults for the wide ocean. This is merely an arm of the sea, that disjoins two neighbouring tracts. It is yours, triumphant, to toss the vast bulk of ships, or sternly boisterous disperse whole fleets. It is below the God of the ocean to terrify an adventurous youth; a praise unworthy the boast of the meanest lake. He indeed is the noble offspring of an illustrious line, but derives not his pedigree from Ulysses of hated memory. Permit him then to come, and save the life of two. He only, it is true, swims;