Too fleeting moments! now succeed your flight, Ambitious rivals rise in hostile fight; Thou fly’st me--fast thy rapid vessel flies, Snatch’d from my eager, my expiring eyes; From that dread moment, sad presage and care, Brood in my heart, my fortitude impair; My fear of Cleopatra’s pow’r renews, Thy former passion, trembling mem’ry views; O rise ye winds! and in the deeps below, Plunge ev’ry bark t’avenge a lover’s woe; Th’ingrate whose crimes no more deserve the light, Death, and the furious pangs of love requite! Or ah! at least the fatal fleet detain, From the curs’d region of my rival’s reign The winds, (ye Gods, I fruitlessly implore!) Already land thee on that hateful shore; The haughty fair I see, with smiles approve The pow’rful influence of her captive love; I see thee adulate her treach’rous charms, And boast my suff’rings, cruel, in her arms; And when enfeebling transports long controul, To languid indolence resigns thy soul; She comes in all her secret arts array’d, Augments her charms by grief’s deceitful aid; Affects the tenderness of pensive thought, A mind with doubt and apprehension fraught; And with her treach’rous sighs and feign’d distress, Revives the passion lost in calm success; ’Tis thus, that mingling caprices and tears, Her form still new, still unimpair’d appears; Thou court’st the error that obscures thy mind, And think’st thou’rt happy, when thou art but blind. What strange excess of folly could delight, When a base triumph dignified thy flight? A Roman chief assuming Bacchus’ name, Thro’ Alexandria, publishes his shame; In these low arts can I that hero view, Who once in Rome far different triumphs knew. Ah! fruitless pains, requited with disdain, The charms of Egypt all thy soul detain; In her gay garden, of umbrageous grove, The Field of War and Fame no more can move. On flowers reclining in luxurious state, Rest Cæsar’s friend, the avenger of his fate; While to Octavia sunk in hapless grief, No spouse, no titles, yield a kind relief: Rome views my hapless fate with pitying eye, Fain from her sight, from all mankind I’d fly: Despair consumes me--and with calm delight, Thy hate forbids thy palace to my flight. To all Marcellus’ tears and mine proclaim, Even to Augustus mingled grief and shame; That infant feels my tears, with fond desire To sooth my sorrows, prattles of his sire; Thy cruel mandates all have seen obey’d, A trophy to thy guilty flame I’m made; In our misfortunes dost thou pleasure find, Can grief and joy at once possess thy mind; But if thy worthless heart more outrage give, I ought to warn thee, long thou wilt not live: I speak as wife, I speak as Roman too, Rome daily loses her respect for you; The child, she says, that own’d my fost’ring care, Thus with a foreigner his life to share, And give the sun to see amidst our arms