Epistulae

troubled deep changed: but, when eager, you have hastened across it in a shorter time. If you are detained here by storms, ought this to make you complain? No tempestuous sea can hurt you when locked in my embraces. I could then calmly listen to the loud threatening winds, nor fatigue Heaven with prayers to smooth the swelling deep. But what has lately happended to cause this unusual dread of the sea? why do you tremble at those waves you formerly despised? For I remember your coming when the sea was no less obstinate and threatening, or at least not much less so. Then I conjured you to be wisely daring, that I might not have cause to lament the fatal effects of your boldness. Whence arises this new fear? Whither has your former courage fled? where is that illustrious swimmer, who nobly despised the threatening waves? Yet rather continue thus, than again expose yourself to former hazards, and

plunge secure into a calm inviting sea; provided only you are unalterably the same, provided you love with the same ardor with which you write, and this noble flame never changes into cold lifeless ashes. I am not so much afraid of the winds that disappoint my earnest wishes, as of your love, that it may prove, like the wind, changeable and inconstant. I fear the not being held in the same esteem; that the dangers may be thought greater than the reward, or that I am accounted too mean a recompence of your toil. Sometimes I am uneasy, from an idea that my country may detract from me, and that a Thracian girl may seem an unequal match for a citizen of Abydos. Yet I can patiently bear any affliction whatever, sooner than the apprehension of your being detained by another flame. Ah! let me rather perish, than suffer under so cruel a distress; may fate end my days before I hear of the dreadful crime!