“If then my fortunes can delight my friend, A story fruitful of events attend: Another’s sorrow may thy ears enjoy, And wine the lengthen’d intervals employ. Long nights the now declining year bestows; A part we consecrate to soft repose, A part in pleasing talk we entertain; For too much rest itself becomes a pain. Let those, whom sleep invites, the call obey, Their cares resuming with the dawning day: Here let us feast, and to the feast be join’d Discourse, the sweeter banquet of the mind; Review the series of our lives, and taste The melancholy joy of evils pass’d: For he who much has suffer’d, much will know, And pleased remembrance builds delight on woe. “Above Ortygia lies an isle of fame, Far hence remote, and Syria is the name (There curious eyes inscribed with wonder trace The sun’s diurnal, and his annual race); Not large, but fruitful; stored with grass to keep The bellowing oxen and the bleating sheep; Her sloping hills the mantling vines adorn, And her rich valleys wave with golden corn. No want, no famine, the glad natives know, Nor sink by sickness to the shades below; But when a length of years unnerves the strong, Apollo comes, and Cynthia comes along. They bend the silver bow with tender skill, And, void of pain, the silent arrows kill. Two equal tribes this fertile land divide, Where two fair cities rise with equal pride. But both in constant peace one prince obey, And Ctesius there, my father, holds the sway. Freighted, it seems, with toys of every sort, A ship of Sidon anchor’d in our port; What time it chanced the palace entertain’d, Skill’d in rich works, a woman of their land: This nymph, where anchor’d the Phoenician train, To wash her robes descending to the main, A smooth tongued sailor won her to his mind (For love deceives the best of womankind). A sudden trust from sudden liking grew; She told her name, her race, and all she knew, ‘I too (she cried) from glorious Sidon came, My father Arybas, of wealthy fame: But, snatch’d by pirates from my native place, The Taphians sold me to this man’s embrace.’ “‘Haste then (the false designing youth replied), Haste to thy country; love shall be thy guide; Haste to thy father’s house, thy father’s breast, For still he lives, and lives with riches blest.’