The forms of decency let age debate,
And virtue’s rules by their cold morals state;
Their ebbing joys give leisure to inquire,
And blame those noble flights our youth inspire:
O pardon and oblige a blushing maid,
Whose rage the pride of her vain sex betray’d,
Nor let my tomb thus mournfully complain—
Here Byblis lies, by her loved Caunus slain.”
Forced here to end, she with a falling tear
Temper’d the pliant wax which did the signet bear
The curious cipher was impress’d by art,
But love had stamp’d one deeper in her heart.
Her page, a youth of confidence and skill
(Secret as night), stood waiting on her will;
Sighing, she cried, “Bear this, thou faithful boy,
To my sweet partner in eternal joy.”
Here a long pause her secret guilt confess’d;
And when, at length, she would have spoken the rest,
Half the dear name lay buried in her breast.
Thus, as he list’ned to her vain command,
Down fell the letter from her trembling hand.
The omen shock’d her soul. “Yet go,” she cried.
“Can a request from Byblis be denied?”
To the Maeandrian youth this message’s borne;
The half-read lines by his fierce rage were torn.
“Hence,” he exclaim’d, “thou vile accomplice, hence;
Enjoy the triumph of thy great offence.
Thy instant death will but divulge her shame,
Or thy life’s blood should quench the guilty flame.”
Frighted, from threat’ning Caunus he withdrew,
And with the dreadful news to his lost mistress flew.
The sad repulse so struck the wounded fair,
Her sense was buried in her wild despair:
Pale was her visage, as the ghastly dead,
And her scared soul from the sweet mansion fled;
Yet with her life renew’d, her love returns,
And faintly thus her cruel fate she mourns:
“ ’Tis just, ye gods! was my false reason blind
To write a secret of this tender kind?
With female craft, I should at first have strove,
By dubious hints to sound his distant love,
And tried those useful, though dissembled, arts,
Which women practise on disdainful hearts.
I should have watch’d whence the black storm might rise,
Ere I had trusted the unfaithful skies.
Now on the rolling billows I am toss’d,
And with extended sails on the blind shelves am lost.
Did not indulgent heaven my deem foretell,
When from my hand the fatal letter fell?
What madness seized my soul, and urged me on,
To take the only course to be undone?
I could myself have told the moving tale,
With such alluring grace as must prevail;
Then had his eyes beheld my blushing fears,
My rising sighs, and my descending tears.
Round his dear neck these arms I then had spread,
And, if rejected, at his feet been dead:
If singly these had not his thoughts inclined,
Yet all united would have shock’d his mind.
Perhaps my careless page might be in fault,
And, in a luckless hour, the fatal message brought;
Business and worldly thoughts might fill his breast,
Sometimes ev’n love itself may be an irksome guest;
He could not else have treated me with scorn,
For Caunus was not of a tigress born,
Nor steel, nor adamant, has fenced his heart;
Like mine, ’tis naked to the burning dart.
“Away, false fears! he must, he shall be mine,
In death alone I will my claim resign:
’Tis vain to wish my written crime unknown,
And for my guilt much vainer to atone.”
Repulsed and baffled, fiercer still she burns,
And Caunus, with disdain, her impious love returns.
He saw no end of her injurious flame,
And fled his country to avoid the shame.
Forsaken Byblis, who had hopes no more,
Burst out in rage, and her loose robes she tore;
With her fair hands she smote her tender breast,
And to the wond’ring world her love confess’d.
O’er hills and dales, o’er rocks and streams she flew,
But still in vain did her wild love pursue.
Wearied, at length, on the cold earth she fell,
And now in tears alone could her sad story tell.
Relenting gods in pity fix’d her there,
And to a fountain turn’d the weeping fair.
Fable of Iphis and Ianthe
A poor man named Lygdus directs his wife to destroy her newborn child should it prove a female—The tenderness of a mother induces her to conceal the sex of her daughter, and Lygdus, at a fit age, provides a suitable partner for his supposed son, whose sex is changed by the interposition of the goddess Isis.
The fame of this, perhaps, through Crete had flown,
But Crete had newer wonders of her own,
In Iphis changed; for near the Gnossian bounds
(As loud report the miracle resounds),
At Phaestus dwelt a man of honest blood,
But meanly born, and not so rich as good,
Esteem’d and loved by all the neighbourhood,
Who, to his wife, before the time assign’d
For childbirth came, thus bluntly spoke his mind:
“If heaven,” said Lygdus, “will vouchsafe to hear,
I have but two petitions to prefer,
Short pains for thee, for me a son and heir.
Girls cost as many throes in bringing forth;
Besides, when born, they prove of little worth,
Weak, puling things, unable to sustain
Their share of labour, and their bread to gain.
If, therefore, thou a creature shalt produce,
Of so great charges, and so little use
(Bear witness, heaven, with what reluctancy),
Her helpless innocence I doom to die.”
He said; and tears the common grief display,
Of him who bade, and her who must obey.
Yet Telethusa still persists, to find
Fit arguments to move a father’s mind,
To extend his wishes to a larger scope,
And in one vessel not confine his hope.
Lygdus continues hard: her time drew near,
And she her heavy load could scarcely bear,
When slumbering, in the latter shades of night,
Before the approaches of returning light,
She saw, or thought she saw, before her bed,
A glorious train, and Isis at their head:
Her moony horns were on her forehead placed,
And yellow sheaves her shining temples graced;
A mitre, for a crown, she wore on high;
The dog and dappled bull were waiting by;
Osiris, sought along the banks of Nile:
The silent god; the sacred crocodile;
And, last, a long procession moving on
With timbrels, that assist the labouring moon.
Her slumbers seem’d dispell’d, and, broad awake,
She heard a voice that thus distinctly spake:
“My votary, thy babe from death defend,
Nor fear to save whate’er the gods will send.
Delude with art thy husband’s dire decree;
When danger calls, repose thy trust on me,
And know thou hast not served a thankless deity.”
This promise made, with night the goddess fled;
With joy the woman
