O bear me, bear me, Fortune, to some grove,
Where your transfixer, harts! and mine may rove.
Touched with my care, my tyrant may prove kind,
Nor let that form conceal an iron mind.
I seem, I seem through lonely fields to stray,
Love wings my feet, and Love directs the way;
I see, I see my lovely Hunter come,
In pride of years, and beauty's fairest bloom.
See, see, the suppliant seems to own my charms!
I rush, I rush into his manly arms.
But why, enthusiast! does thy fancy stray?
Grandeur forbids, and birth besets the way.
See! Greatness chides me with a frowning face;
For shame, for shame, desire a clown's embrace!
Let opening earth the blushing maid receive,
Avail from Calumny the spotless grave.
But, Calumny, can you my case remove ?
Too weak a combatant for mighty Love-
Love, mighty Love, I am thy victim whole!
Love holds the reins, and actuates my soul.
But ah! perhaps a maid of happier charms
Attracts the traveller to her lovely arms.
In vain, Egidia, melts thy tearful eyes,
Thy rival shall enfold thy envied prize.
Blow, Boreas, blow the rough cerulean main,
And from her arms the lovely youth detain.
Time, time may wear her image from his mind,
And chance may make the hill-born hero kind.
In vain, in vain I sooth my glowing care,
In vain elude thy venomed pangs, Despair!
Even now, perhaps, the seamen ply the oar,
And waft my soul into the farther shore.
The lovely maid upon the bed reclined,
Thus mournful tortured all her virgin mind.
Obsequious maids, around the love-sick fair,
Fetch sigh for sigh, and tear distil with tear.
Some silent stand, and some attempt relief
By balmy words, and sooth the virgin's grief;
But still her snowy throbbing bosom sighs,
And tears descend from her love-darting eyes.
Her snowy neck disordered hair o'erspread,
Her tear-washed cheeks diffuse a rosy red,
Her swelling arms are decored with snow,
And all the graces in the virgin glow.
Thus, spreading her white limbs along the plains,
The blooming Venus mourned Adonis slain:
Adown her rosy neck the tresses flow,
Her eyes look languid through the veil of woe;
"Twixt her loose robe her heaving breast is seen,
And all the graces mourn around their queen.
Thus on the downy bed the virgin burns,
And round the fair the blooming bevy mourns.
The monarch hears his love-sick daughter's pain:
Why weeps my daughter, why, my joy, complain?
The youth remains, nor is the noble fled,
Nor shall his noble blood disgrace the marriage-bed.
No horrid herdsman, no indecent hind,
Of clownish manners, or rapacious mind,
First, Cupid, aimed thy soft enamouring dart,
And vanquished all my young Egidia's heart.
Obscure, unhonoured, heedless, all alone,
Lost to himself, and to the world unknown,
The youth, long, Grampus! climbed thy brows, till fate
Instructs the mind, and spread the arms of state.
Good is thy choice, and what thy sire designed;
Dry, dry these cheeks, and sooth thy troubled mind.
The monarch placid spoke: The maid arose,
Her raptured soul with joys extatic glows.
The veil of woe removed, she brightly shone;
As beamy Phœbus, or the silver moon
Emerging from a cloud, she graceful moves,
And gently trip around the little loves.
Before the priest the blooming couple stand;
Much she desired, but blushed to join the hand.
"Tis done; the youthful hero spreads his arms,
And clasps, enraptured, more than phantomed charms.
beauty, like the moon from the cloud of the east." I. 92.
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