Epistulae

upon you. In vain I beg: he murmurs and rages at my petitions, nor offers to smoothe the billows which he has so violently agitated. Oh that Dædalus would gift me with daring wings! the Icarian shore so near, causes no terror in me.

I will boldly venture, whatever be the issue; let me only mount my body aloft in air, as it has often hovered upon uncertain waves. Meantime, while the winds and waves thus cross all my hopes, I revolve in my mind the first moments of our stolen delights.

Night was coming on, (for there is a pleasure in calling to remembrance past enjoyments,) when, full of love, I left the gates of my father's house. Then without delay pulling off my clothes, and casting away at the same time all fear, I with pliant arms cut the yielding tide. The Moon, like a faithful attendant to direct my way, furnished a trembling light as I traversed the flood. Regarding her with a wishful look, "Bright Goddess," I said, "favor my design, and call to mind the happy Latmian cliffs. Endymion cannot allow that you should

be of an unrelenting mind; favor therefore with a friendly look these my stolen delights. You, though a Goddess, left heaven in quest of a mortal: Why should I not speak the truth? she whom I pursue is a very Goddess. For, not to mention her manners, the truest tokens of a heavenly mind, a beauty so exquisite can only fall to the share of a Goddess. No face, Venus and you excepted, can equal hers: nor trust entirely to my words, but view her yourself. As all the stars of heaven disappear before your superior brightness, when you shine out in the full splendor of your silver rays; in like manner when she approaches, all other beauties are overlooked. To doubt of this, Cynthia, would be owning yourself destitute of sight." Having addressed her thus, or in words to the like purport, I in the silent night bore through the yielding waves. The surface of the deep shone with the reflection of the moon's rays, and in the dead of night was a light clear as that at mid-day. No voice, no sound reached my ears, but the deep murmurs of the broken waves. The king-fishers alone, mind-