And, lost myself, would still preserve my foe.

False as thou art, I not thy death design: O rather live, to be the cause of mine! Should some avenging storm thy vessel tear,

(But Heaven forbid my words should omen bear)

Then in thy face thy perjur'd vows would fly;

And my wrong'd ghost be present to thy

eye.

With threatening looks think thou behold'st me stare,

Gasping my mouth, and clotted all my hair.

Then, should fork'd lightning and red thunder fall,

What could'st thou say, but I deserv'd 'em all?

Lest this should happen, make not haste away;

To shun the danger will be worth thy stay.

Have pity on thy son, if not on me: My death alone is guilt enough for thee. What has his youth, what have thy gods deserv'd,

To sink in seas, who were from fires preserv'd?

But neither gods nor parent dost thou bear;

Smooth stories all to please a woman's

ear,

False as the tale of thy romantic life.
Nor yet am I thy first deluded wife:
Left to pursuing foes Creusa stay'd,
By thee, base man, forsaken and be-
tray'd.

This, when thou told'st me, struck my tender heart,

That such requital follow'd such desert. Nor doubt I but the gods, for crimes. like these,

Seven winters kept thee wandering on the

seas.

Thy starv'd companions, cast ashore, I fed,

Thyself admitted to my crown and bed.

To harbour strangers, succour the distrest,

Was kind enough; but, oh, too kind the rest!

Curst be the cave which first my ruin brought,

Where, from the storm, we common shelter sought!

A dreadful howling echo'd round the place:

The mountain nymphs, thought I, my nuptials grace.

I thought so then, but now too late I know

The Furies yell'd my funerals from below. O Chastity and violated Fame,

Exact your dues to my dead husband's name!

By death redeem my reputation lost, And to his arms restore my guilty ghost. Close by my palace, in a gloomy grove, Is rais'd a chapel to my murder'd love; There, wreath'd with boughs and wool, his statue stands,

The pious monument of artful hands. Last night, methought, he call'd me from the dome,

And thrice, with hollow voice cry'd, "Dido, come."

She comes; thy wife thy lawful summons hears;

But comes more slowly, clogg'd with con

That each unjustly is disdain'd for thee. To proud Hyarbas give me up a prey; (For that must follow, if thou goest away.)

Or to my husband's murderer leave my life,

That to the husband he may add the wife. Go then, since no complaints can move thy mind:

Go, perjur'd man, leave thy gods behind.

Touch not those gods, by whom thou art forsworn,

Who will in impious hands no more be borne:

Thy sacreligious worship they disdain, And rather would the Grecian fires sustain.

Perhaps my greatest shame is still to

come,

And part of thee lies hid within my womb. The babe unborn must perish by thy hate,

And perish guiltless in his mother's fate.

Some god, thou say'st, thy voyage does command;

Would the same god had barr'd thee from my land!

The same, I doubt not, thy departure steers,

Who kept thee out at sea so many years; While thy long labours were a price so great,

As thou to purchase Troy would'st not repeat.

But Tyber now thou seek'st, to be at best,

When there arriv'd, a poor precarious guest.

Yet it deludes thy search: perhaps it will
To thy old age lie undiscover'd still.
A ready crown and wealth in dower I
bring,

And, without conquering, here thou art a king.

Here thou to Carthage may'st transfer thy Troy:

Here young Ascanius may his arms employ;

And, while we live secure in soft repose, Bring many laurels home from conquer'd foes.

By Cupid's arrows, I adjure thee, stay; By all the gods, companions of thy way. So may thy Trojans, who are yet alive, Live still, and with no future fortune strive;

So may thy youthful son old age attain, And thy dead father's bones in peace remain:

As thou hast pity on unhappy me, Who knew no crime, but too much love for thee.

I am not born from fierce Achilles' line, Nor did my parents against Troy combine.

To be thy wife if I unworthy prove,
By some inferior name admit my love.
To be secur'd of still possessing thee,
What would I do, and what would I not
be!

Our Libyan coasts their certain seasons know,

THE PRECEPTOR OF LOVE

OVID

[From the Art of Love, Book I]

The lover of Roman elegy came to look upon himself as peculiarly fitted by experience to give instruction to others in the art of love. Tibullus and Propertius give only hints of this point of view; Ovid comes out boldly with the announcement, at the beginning of a textbook on the subject, that he is the expert and supreme

master.

In Cupid's school whoe'er would take degree,

Must learn his rudiments by reading me. Seamen with sailing arts their vessels

move;

Art guides the chariot: Art instructs to love.

Of ships and chariots others know the rule;

But I am master in Love's mighty school.
Cupid indeed is obstinate and wild,
A stubborn god; but yet the god's a
child:

Easy to govern in his tender age,
Like fierce Achilles in his pupillage:
That hero, born for conquest, trembling
stood

Before the Centaur, and receiv'd the rod.
As Chiron mollify'd his cruel mind
With art, and taught his warlike hands
to wind

The silver strings of his melodious lyre: So Love's fair goddess does my soul inspire,

To teach her softer arts; to sooth the mind,

And smooth the rugged breasts of human-kind.

Yet Cupid and Achilles each with scorn And rage were fill'd; and both were goddess-born.

The bull, reclaim'd and yok'd, the burthen draws;

The horse receives the bit within his jaws;

In hollow docks the shattered ships recline;

Lest, in mid-ocean, split the starting pine;

Lest faint he fall, and shame his palmcrowned speed,

The languid race-horse crops the grassy mead:

The veteran soldier, active now no more, Hangs by his old fireside the arms he bore:

So, while in tardy age my powers decline, The wand of free dismissal should be mine.

'Twas time no more to breathe a foreign air,

Nor to a Scythian spring in thirst repair; But to wide gardens, (such I had) re

treat,

Or seek the face of men in Rome's enlivening street.

This, for no thoughts the future could divine,

This soft old age I hoped would have been mine.

The fates withstood: my early years they blessed,

And bade calamity weigh down the rest. Ten lustres, free from moral stain, are

fled:

In life's worst stage misfortune bows my head.

The goal of ease just opening to my view,

Ah! madman! have I forced from HIM a frown,

Than whom the world no milder heart

has known?

And do my crimes that clemency exceed? Yet life is spared me for my error's deed. Ah me! a life beneath the Northern pole;

Left to the Euxine's waves that blackening roll:

Had Delphos' cave, Dodona's oak, in strain

Prophetic warned me, I had deemed them vain.

its frame,

As that its strength repels Jove's rushing

flame:

Nor aught so high, above misfortune's rod,

But lies beneath the o'er-ruling arm of God.

What though my fault, in part, these miseries drew,

Too hard a doom from angry heaven I

rue.

Warned by my fate, HIS gracious favour prize,

Who sits vicegerent of the Deities. -C. A. ELTON.

Phædrus was a freedman, possibly of Augustus, who is thought to have written his Fables in the reign of Tiberius (14 to 38). Fables of this type were written at least as early as the sixth century B.C. Those of Æsop were widely popular among the Greeks, and served as models for later imitators. The collection by Phædrus is the earliest now in existence.

THE PURPOSE OF FABLE-WRITING

[From the Prologue]

What from the founder Æsop fell,
In neat familiar verse I tell:
Twofold's the genius of the page,
To make you smile and make you
sage.

But if the critics we displease,
By wrangling brutes and talking trees,
Let them remember, ere they blame,
We're working neither sin nor shame;
'Tis but a play to form the youth
By fiction, in the cause of truth.

-CHRISTOPHER SMART.

THE WOLF AND THE LAMB
[Fables I, 1]

By thirst incited; to the brook
The Wolf and Lamb themselves betook.
The Wolf high up the current drank,
The Lamb far lower down the bank.
Then, bent his rav'nous maw to cram,
The Wolf took umbrage at the Lamb.
"How dare you trouble all the flood,
And mingle my good drink with mud?"
"Sir," says the Lambkin, sore afraid,
"How should I act, as you upbraid?
The thing you mention cannot be,
The stream descends from you to me."
Abashed by facts, says he, "I know
'Tis now exact six months ago

You strove my honest fame to blot”— "Six months ago, sir, I was not." "Then 'twas th' old ram thy sire," he

cried,

And so he tore him, till he died.

To those this fable I address Who are determined to oppress, And trump up any false pretence, But they will injure innocence.

-CHRISTOPHER SMART.