Ah let me seek it from the raging seas: To raging seas unpitied I'll remove, And either cease to live or cease to love! FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: The ancients have left us little further account of Phaon than that he was an old mariner, whom Venus transformed into a very beautiful youth, whom Sappho and several other Lesbian ladies, fell passionately in love with.--FENTON.] [Footnote 2: Mrs. Behn's translation: Say, lovely youth, why would'st thou thus betray.--WAKEFIELD.] [Footnote 3: In the MS.: These mournful numbers suit a mournful muse.] [Footnote 4: Our poet has not varied much here from the couplet of his predecessor, Sir Carr Scrope: I burn, I burn, like kindled fields of corn, When by the driving winds the flames are borne.--WAKEFIELD. The first version in Pope's manuscript, though not so closely copied from Scrope, is decidedly inferior to the text: I burn, I burn, as when fierce whirlwinds raise The spreading flames, and crackling harvests blaze.] [Footnote 5: A childish, false thought.--WARTON.] [Footnote 6: Scrope's couplet exceeds this in simplicity, and to my taste, on the whole, is preferable: My muse, and lute can now no longer please; These are th' employments of a mind at ease.--WAKEFIELD.] [Footnote 7: As Ovid tells the story in his Metamorphoses, Apollo fell in love with Daphne and pursued her. When he was gaining upon her in the race she was transformed, at her own request, into a laurel. The Cretan dame was Ariadne. Bacchus was smitten with her extraordinary beauty, and married her.] [Footnote 8: This happy line, which is not too extravagant for a lover, belongs to Pope.] [Footnote 9: Andromeda, the daughter of Cepheus, an Æthiopian king. Her mother thought herself superior in beauty to the Nereids, which excited their jealousy, and through their influence a sea-monster was sent to prey upon man and beast in the dominions of Cepheus. To atone for her mother's vanity, and rid the land of the scourge, Cepheus agreed to offer up Andromeda to the monster. She was chained to a rock on the coast, where Perseus saw her at the critical moment when she was about to be devoured. Captivated by her charms he engaged and slew the monster, and made Andromeda his wife.] [Footnote 10: This is very inferior to the conciseness, and simplicity of the original, "memini (meminerunt omnia amantes)." Sir Carr Scrope's translation is nearer the original, and more natural as well as elegant: For they who truly love remember all.--BOWLES.] [Footnote 11: This line is another of the embellishments which Pope engrafted on the original.] [Footnote 12: The first line of this couplet is faulty in point of versification, and, to use our bard's own remark, ten low words creep in one dull line. As to the last line, it is wholly redundant, and has no place in the original.--RUFFHEAD.]