These are your words, but I can guess your sense. Your unripe hopes their harvest must attend; Be ruled by me, and time may be your friend. This is enough to let you understand; For now my pen has tired my tender hand. My woman knows the secret of my heart, And may hereafter better news impart. FOOTNOTES: [13] This epistle was partly translated by Lord Mulgrave. [14] Ariadne. [15] A Phrygian nymph, seduced and deserted by Paris before his Spartan expedition. DIDO TO ÆNEAS. EPIST. VII. THE ARGUMENT. _Æneas, the son of Venus and Anchises, having, at the destruction of Troy, saved his Gods, his father, and son Ascanius, from the fire, put to sea with twenty sail of ships; and, having been long tost with tempests, was at last cast upon the shore of Libya, where queen Dido (flying from the cruelty of Pygmalion, her brother, who had killed her husband Sichæus) had lately built Carthage. She entertained Æneas and his fleet with great civility, fell passionately in love with him, and in the end denied him not the last favours. But Mercury admonishing Æneas to go in search of Italy, (a kingdom promised him by the Gods,) he readily prepared to follow him. Dido soon perceived it, and, having in vain tried all other means to engage him to stay, at last, in despair, writes to him as follows._ So, on Mæander's banks, when death is nigh, The mournful swan sings her own elegy. Not that I hope (for, oh, that hope were vain!) By words your lost affection to regain; But, having lost whate'er was worth my care, Why should I fear to lose a dying prayer? 'Tis then resolved poor Dido must be left, Of life, of honour, and of love bereft! While you, with loosened sails, and vows, prepare To seek a land that flies the searcher's care; Nor can my rising towers your flight restrain, Nor my new empire, offered you in vain. Built walls you shun, unbuilt you seek; that land Is yet to conquer, but you this command. Suppose you landed where your wish designed, Think what reception foreigners would find. What people is so void of common sense, To vote succession from a native prince? Yet there new sceptres and new loves you seek, New vows to plight, and plighted vows to break. When will your towers the height of Carthage know? Or when your eyes discern such crowds below? If such a town and subjects you could see, Still would you want a wife who loved like me. For, oh, I burn, like fires with incense bright; Not holy tapers flame with purer light. Æneas is my thoughts' perpetual theme, Their daily longing, and their nightly dream. Yet he's ungrateful and obdurate still; Fool that I am to place my heart so ill! Myself I cannot to myself restore; Still I complain, and still I love him more. Have pity, Cupid, on my bleeding heart, And pierce thy brother's with an equal dart.