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There injured lovers, leaping from above,
Their flames extinguish, and forget to love.
Deucalion once with hopeless fury burn'd,
In vain he loved, relentless Pyrrha scorn'd:
But when from hence he plunged into the main,
Deucalion scorn'd, and Pyrrha loved in vain.
Haste, Sappho, haste! from high Leucadia throw
Thy wretched weight, nor dread the deeps below!"
She spoke, and vanish'd with the voice-I rise,
And silent tears fall trickling from my eyes.
I go, ye nymphs! those rocks and seas to prove;
How much I fear, but ah, how much I love!
I go, ye nymphs, where furious love inspires;
Let female fears submit to female fires.
To rocks and seas I fly from Phaon's hate,
And hope from seas and rocks a milder fate.
Ye gentle gales, beneath my body blow,
And softly lay me on the waves below!
And thou, kind Love, my sinking limbs sustain,
Spread thy soft wings, and waft me o'er the main,
Nor let a lover's death the guiltless flood profane!
On Phoebus' shrine my harp I'll then bestow,
And this incription shall be placed below,
"Here she who sung, to him that did inspire,
Sappho to Phoebus consecrates her lyre;
What suits with Sappho, Phœbus, suits with thee;
The gift, the giver, and the god agree.”

But why, alas! relentless youth, ah why
To distant seas must tender Sappho fly ?
Thy charms than those may far more powerful be,
And Phoebus' self is less a god to me.

Ah! canst thou doom me to the rocks and sea,
O far more faithless and more hard than they ?
Alas! the Muses now no more inspire,
Untuned my lute, and silent is my lyre.
My languid numbers have forgot to flow,
And fancy sinks beneath the weight of woe.
Ye Lesbian virgins, and ye Lesbian dames,
No more my verse your rapt attention claims,
No more your groves with my glad songs shall ring,
No more these hands shall touch the trembling string:
My Phaon 's fled, and I those arts resign

(Wretch that I am, to call that Phaon mine!)
Return, fair youth, return, and bring along

Joy to my soul, and vigour to my song:
Absent from thee, the poet's flame expires;
But ah! how fiercely burn the lover's fires!
Gods! can no prayers, no sighs, no numbers move
One savage heart, or teach it how to love?
The winds my prayers, my sighs, my numbers bear,
The flying winds have lost them all in air!
Or when, alas! shall more auspicious gales
To these fond eyes restore thy welcome sails!
If you return-ah why these long delays?
Poor Sappho dies while careless Phaon stays.
O launch the bark, nor fear the watery plain;
Venus for thee shall smooth her native main.
O launch thy bark, secure of prosperous gales;
Cupid for thee shall spread the swelling sails.
If you will fly-(yet ah! what cause can be,
Too cruel youth, that you should fly from me?)
If not from Phaon must hope for ease,
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!

ELOÏSA TO ABELARD.

ARGUMENT.

ABELARD and Eloïsa flourished in the twelfth century; they were two of the most distinguished persons of their age in learning and beauty. Peter Abelard was born at Palais, a small town of France, in the neighbourhood of Nantes, 1079. In his early youth he was distinguished by his extraordinary abilities and his scholastic acquirements, which raised him from being the disciple of William de Champeaux and the celebrated Anselme, to a successful rivalry with those eminent philosophers and theologians. The great reputation of his school in Paris attracted to his lectures students not only from various parts of France, but from Spain, Italy, Germany, Flanders, and Great Britain. He procured admission as a boarder to the house of Fulbert, a canon of the cathedral church, and undertook the office of tutor to his niece Eloïsa, then eighteen years of age, of great personal beauty, and already celebrated for her literary attainments. False to his trust, he succeeded in engaging her affections; and after the birth of a son in Bretagne, whither she had fled from the resentment of her uncle, Abelard, to repair the injury done to Fulbert in the dishonour of his niece, proposed to make her his wife on condition the marriage should be kept secret. The performance of the nuptial ceremony was, however, ineffectual in reconciling them, as Abelard resisted Fulbert's wishes to publish the marriage, and Eloïsa obstinately disavowed it. In revenge for the disgrace thus cast on the reputation of his family, Fulbert employed certain ruffians to enter Abelard's chamber by night, and inflict on his person a barbarous and cruel mutilation. Abelard, resolving to hide his grief and shame in a cloister, assumed the monastic habit in the convent of St. Denis a few days after Eloïsa had taken the vows in that of Argenteuil. Some years subsequently, Eloïsa, who had become prioress, was driven forth with her nuns from her convent, and in her distress, accepted an asylum offered her by Abelard in that of Paraclete, or the Comforter, founded by him some time before in the forest of Champagne, near Nogent upon the Seine. It was in this retirement the interesting correspondence between the lovers (which is still extant) originated, in the accident of a letter of Abelard's, narrating to a friend the history of his misfortunes, having fallen into the hands of Eloïsa. This awakening all her tenderness, occasioned those celebrated letters, out of which the following is partly extracted.

Abelard died in 1142, and Eloïsa twenty-one years after. Her body was placed in the same tomb with his in the church of the Paraclete, but their remains were afterwards removed, and now rest in the cemetery of Père la Chaise, at Paris.

In these deep solitudes and awful cells,
Where heavenly-pensive Contemplation dwells,
And ever-musing Melancholy reigns;

What means this tumult in a vestal's veins ?
Why rove my thoughts beyond this last retreat?
Why feels my heart its long-forgotten heat?

Yet, yet I love!-From Abelard it came,
And Eloïsa yet must kiss the name.

Dear fatal name! rest ever unreveal'd,
Nor pass these lips in holy silence seal'd:
Hide it, my heart, within that close disguise,
Where mix'd with God's, his loved idea lies:
O write it not, my hand-the name appears
Already written-wash it out, my tears!
In vain lost Eloïsa weeps and prays,
Her heart still dictates, and her hand obeys.

Relentless walls! whose darksome round contains Repentant sighs, and voluntary pains:

Ye rugged rocks, which holy knees have worn;
Ye grots and caverns shagg'd with horrid thorn!
Shrines! where their vigils pale-eyed virgins keep,
And pitying saints, whose statues learn to weep!
Tho' cold like you, unmoved and silent grown,
I have not yet forgot myself to stone.
All is not Heaven's while Abelard has part,
Still rebel nature holds out half my heart;
Nor prayers nor fasts its stubborn pulse restrain,
Nor tears for ages taught to flow in vain.
Soon as thy letters trembling I unclose,
That well-known name awakens all my woes.
O name for ever sad! for ever dear!

Still breathed in sighs, still usher'd with a tear.
I tremble too, whene'er my own I find,

Some dire misfortune follows close behind.
Line after line my gushing eyes o'erflow,
Led through a sad variety of woe:

Now warm in love, now withering in my bloom,
Lost in a convent's solitary gloom!

There stern Religion quench'd the unwilling flame,
There died the best of passions, Love and Fame.
Yet write, oh! write me all, that I may join
Griefs to thy griefs, and echo sighs to thine.
Nor foes nor fortune take this power away;
And is my Abelard less kind than they?
Tears still are mine, and those I need not spare,
Love but demands what else were shed in prayer;
No happier task these faded eyes pursue;
To read and weep is all they now can do.

Then share thy pain, allow that sad relief;
Ah, more than share it! give me all thy grief.

Heaven first taught letters for some wretch's aid,
Some banish'd lover, or some captive maid;

They live, they speak, they breathe what love inspires,
Warm from the soul, and faithful to its fires,
The virgin's wish without her fears impart,
Excuse the blush, and pour out all the heart,
Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul,
And waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole.

Thou know'st how guiltless first I met thy flame, When Love approach'd me under friendship's name ; My fancy form'd thee of angelic kind,

Some emanation of the all-beauteous Mind.
Those smiling eyes, attempering every ray,
Shone sweetly lambent with celestial day.
Guiltless I gazed, Heaven listen'd while you sung;
And truths divine came mended from that tongue *.
Alas, how changed! what sudden horrors rise!
A naked lover bound and bleeding lies!
Where, where was Eloïse? her voice, her hand,
Her poniard had opposed the dire command.
Barbarian, stay! that bloody stroke restrain;
The crime was common, common be the pain.
-I can no more, by shame, by rage suppress'd―
Let tears and burning blushes speak the rest.

Canst thou forget that sad, that solemn day,
When victims at yon altar's foot we lay?
Canst thou forget what tears that moment fell,
When, warm in youth, I bade the world farewell?
As with cold lips I kiss'd the sacred veil,

The shrines all trembled, and the lamps grew pale:
Heaven scarce believed the conquest it survey'd,
And saints with wonder heard the vows I made.
Yet then, to those dread altars as I drew,
Not on the cross my eyes were fix'd, but you:
But now instruct me other joys to prize,
With other beauties charm my partial eyes,
Full in my view set all the bright abode,
And make my soul quit Abelard for God.

Ah think at least thy flock deserves thy care,
Plants of thy hand, and children of thy prayer;
From the false world in early youth they fled,
By thee to mountains, wilds, and deserts led.

He was her preceptor in philosophy and divinity.

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