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Written, according to POPE, in 1707. First published in Tonson’s Ovid in 1712.

From the fifteenth of Ovid’s Epistels

Say, lovely Youth, that dost my heart command,

Can Phaon’s eyes forget the Sappho’s hand?

Must than her name the wretched writer prove,

To thy remembrance lost, as to thy love?

Ask not the cause that I new numbers choose,

The lute neglected and the lyric Muse;

Love taught my tears in sadder notes to flow,

And tuned my heart to elegies of woe.

I burn, I burn, as when thro’ ripen’d corn

By driving winds the spreading flames are born!

Phaon to Etna’s scorching fields retires,

While I consume with more than Etna’s fires!

No more my soul a charm in music finds;

Music has charms alone for peaceful minds.

Soft scenes of solitude no more can please;

Love enters there, and I’m my own disease.

No more the Lesbian dames my passion move,

All other loves are lost in only thine,

O youth, ungrateful to a flame like mine!

Whom would not all those blooming charms surprise,

Those hav’nly looks, and dear deluding eyes?

The harp and bow would you like Phoebus bear,

A brighter Phoebus Phaon might appear;

Would you with ivy wreathe your flowing hair,

Not Bacchus’ self with Phaon sould compare:

Yet Phoebus lov’d, and Bacchus felt the flame,

One Daphne warm’d, and one Cretan dame;

Nymphs that in verse no more could rival me,

Than ev’n those Gods content in charms with thee.

The Muses teach me all their softes lays,

And the wide world resounds with Sappho’s praise.

Tho’ great Alceus more sublimely sings,

And strikes with bolder rage the sounding strings,

No less renown attends the moving lyre,

Which Venus tunes, and all her love inspire;

To me what Nature has in charms denied,

Is well by Wit’s more lasting flames supplied.

Tho’ short my stature, yet my name extends

To Heav’n itself, and earth’s remotes ends.

Brown as I am, the Ethiopian dame

Inspired young Perseus with a gen’rous flame;

Turtles and doves of diff’rent hues unite,

And glossy jet is pair’d with shining white.

If to no charms thou wilt thy heart resign,

But such as merit, such as equal thine,

By none, alas! by none thou canst be mov’d,

Phaon alone by Phaon must be lov’d!

Yet once thy Sappho could thy cares employ,

Once in her arms you centered all your joy:

No time the dear remembrance can remove,

For oh! how vast a memory has Love!

My music, than, you could ever hear,

And all my words were music to my ear.

You stopp’d with kisses my enchanting tongue,

And found my kisses sweeter than my song.

In all I pleas’d, but most in what was best;

And the last joy was dearer than the rest.

Then with each word, each glance, each motion fired,

You still enjoy’d, and yet you still desired,

Till, all dissolving, in trance we lay,

And in tumultuous raptures died away.

The fair Sicilians now thy soul inflame;

Why was I born, ye Gods, a Lesbian dame?

But ah, beware, Sicilian nymphs! nor boast

That wand’ring heart which I so lately lost;

Nor be with all those tempting words abused,

Those tempting words were all to Sappho used.

And you that rule Sicilia’s happy plains,

Have pity, Venus, on your poet’s pains!

Shall fortune still in one sad tenor run,

And still increase the woes so soon begun?

Inured to sorrow from my tender years,

My parents’ ashes drank my early tears:

My brother next, neglecting wealth and fame,

Ignobly burn’d in a destructive flame:

An infant daughter late my griefs increas’d

And all a mother’s care distract my breast.

Alas! what more could Fate itself impose,

But thee, the last, and greatest of my woes?

No more my robes in waving purple flow,

Nor on my hand the sparkling diamonds glow;

No more my locks in ringlets curl’d difuse

The costly sweetness of Arabian dews,

Nor braids of gold the varied tresses bind,

That fly disorder’d with wanton wind:

For whom should Sappho use such arts as these?

He’s gone, whom only she desires to please!

Cupid’s light darts my tender bosom move;

Still is there cause for Sappho still to love:

So from my birth the sisters fix’d my doom,

And gave to Venus all mu life to come;

Oh, while my Muse in melting notes complains,

My yielding heart keeps measure to my strains.

By charms like thine which all my soul have won,

Who might not – ah! who would not be undone?
For those might Cynthia lengthen Phaon’s sleep,

And bid Endymion nightly tend his sheep.

Venus for those had rapt thee to the skies;

But Mars on thee might look with Venus’ eyes.

O scarce youth, yet scarce a tender boy!

O useful time for lovers to employ!

Pride of thy age, and glory of thy race,

Come to this arms, and melt in this embrace!

The vows you never will return, receive;

And take, at least, the love you will not give.

See, while I write, mu words are lost in tears!

The less my sense, the more my love appears.

Sure’t was not much to bid one kind adieu

(At least to feign was never hard to you):

‘Farewell, my Lesbian love’, you might have said;

Or coldly thus, ‘Farewell, O Lesbian maid’!

No tear did you, no parting kiss receive,

Nor knew I then how much I was to grieve.

No lover’s gift your Sappho could confer,

And wrongs and woes were all you left with her.

No charge I gave you, and no charge could give,

But this, ‘Be mindful of our loves, and live’

Now by the Nine, those powers ador’d by me,

And Love, the God that ever waits on thee,

When first I heard (from whom I hardly knew)

That you were fled, and all my joys with you,

Like some sad statue, speechless, pale, I stood,

Grief chill’d my breast, and stopped my freezing blood;

No sigh to rise, no tear to had power to flow,

Fix’d in a stupid lethargy of woe:

But when its way th’ impetuous passion found,

I rend mu tresses, and my breast I wound;

I rave, than weep; I curse, and than complain;

Now swell to rage, now melt in tears again.

Not fiercer pangs distract the mournful dame,

Whose first-born infant feeds the funeral flame.

My scornful brother with a smile appears,

Insults my woes, and triumphs in my tears;

His hated image ever haunts my eyes;

‘And why this grief? thy daughter lives’, he cries,

Stung with my love, and furious with despair,

All torn my garments, and mu bosom bare,

My woes, thy crimes, I to the world proclaim,

Such inconsistent things are Love and Shame!

‘T is thou art all my care and my delight,

My daily longing, and my dream by night:

O night more pleasing than the brightest day,

When fancy gives what absence takes away,

And, dress’d in all its visionary charms,

Restores my fair deserter to my arms!

Then round your neck in wanton wreaths I twine;

Then you , methinks, as fondly circle mine:

A thousand tender words I hear and speak;

A thousand melting kisses give and take:

Then fiercer joys – I blush to mention these,

Yet, while I blush, confess how much they please.

But when, with day, the sweet delusions fly,

And all things wake to life and joy but I,

As if once more forsaken, I complain,

And close my eyes to dream of you again:

Then frantic rise, and like some fury rove

Thro’ lonely plains, and thro’ the silent grove;

As if the silent grove, and the lonely plains,

That knew my pleasures, could relieve my pains.

I view the grotto, once the scene of love,

The rocks around, the hanging roofs above,

That charm’d me more, with native moss o’ergrown

Than Phrygian marble, or the Parian stone:

I find that the shades that veil’d our joys before;

But, Phaon gone, those shades delight no more.

Here the press’d herbs with bending tops betray

Where oft entwin’d in am’rous folds we lay;

I kiss that earth which once was press’d by you

And all with tears the with’ring herbs bedew.

For thee the fading trees appear to mourn,

And birds defer their song till thy return:

Night shades the groves, and all in silence lie,

All but the mournful Philomel and I:

With mournful Philomel I join my strain,

Of Tereus she, of Phaon I complain.

A spring there is, whose silver waters show,

Clear as the glass, the shining sands below:

A flowery lotos spreads its arms above,

Shades all the banks, and seems itself a grove;

Eternal greens the mossy margin grace,

Watch’d the sylvan genius of the place.

Here as I lay, and swell’d with tears the flood,

Before my sight a wat’ry virgin stood:

She stood and cried, ‘O you that love in vain!

Fly hence, and seek the fair Leucadian main.

There stands a rock, from whose impending steep

Apollo’s fane surveys the rolling deep;

There injur’d lovers, leaping from above,

Their flames extinguish, and forget to love.

Deucalion once with hopeless fury burn’d;

In vain he lov’d, relentless Pyrrha scorn’d;

But when from hence he plunged into the main,

Deucalion scorn’d, and Pyrrha lov’d in vain.

Haste, Sappho, haste, from high Leucadia throw

Thy wretched weight, nor dread thee deeps below!’

She spoke, and vanish’d with the voice – I rise,

And the silent tears fall trickling from my eyes.

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;}

…

(изд. LIBERTY FUND inc.: “The Complete Poetical Works of Alexander Pope”, Cambridge Edition – “Houghton, Mifflin and Co.” 1903)