“Iphis, of vulgar birth, by chance had view’d
Fair Anaxarete of Teucer’s blood.
Not long had he beheld the royal dame
Ere the bright sparkle kindled into flame.
Oft did he struggle with a just despair,
Unfix’d to ask, unable to forbear.
But love, who flatters still his own disease,
Hopes all things will succeed he knows will please
Where’er the fair one haunts, he hovers there,
And seeks her confidant with sighs, and prayer;
Or letters he conveys, that seldom prove
Successless messengers in suits of love.
“Now shivering at her gates the wretch appears,
And myrtle garlands on the columns rears,
Wet with a deluge of unbidden tears.
The nymph, more hard than rocks, more deaf than seas,
Derides his prayers, insults his agonies;
Arraigns of insolence the aspiring swain,
And takes a cruel pleasure in his pain.
Resolved at last to finish his despair,
He thus upbraids the inexorable fair:
“ ‘Oh, Anaxarete, at last forget
The license of a passion indiscreet.
Now triumph, since a welcome sacrifice
Your slave prepares to offer to your eyes.
My life, without reluctance, I resign;
That present best can please a pride like thine.
But, oh! forbear to blast a flame so bright,
Doom’d never to expire but with the light.
And you, great powers, do justice to my name;
The hours, you take from life, restore to fame.’
“Then o’er the posts, once hung with wreaths, he throws
The ready cord, and fits the fatal noose;
For death prepares; and bounding from above,
At once the wretch concludes his life and love.
“Ere long the people gather, and the dead
Is to his mourning mother’s arms convey’d.
First, like some ghastly statue she appears;
Then bathes the breathless corse in seas of tears,
And gives it to the pile; now as the throng
Proceed in sad solemnity along,
To view the passing pomp the cruel fair
Hastes, and beholds her breathless lover there.
Struck with the sight, inanimate she seems;
Set are her eyes, and motionless her limbs;
Her features without fire, her colour gone,
And, like her heart, she hardens into stone.
In Salamis the statue still is seen,
In the famed temple of the Cyprian queen.
Warn’d by this tale, no longer then disdain,
Oh, nymph beloved, to ease a lover’s pain.
So may the frosts in spring your blossoms spare,
And winds their rude autumnal rage forbear.”
The story oft Vertumnus urged in vain,
But then assumed his heavenly form again.
Such looks, and lustre the bright youth adorn,
As when with rays glad Phoebus paints the morn.
The sight so warms the fair admiring maid,
Like snow she melts: so soon can youth persuade.
Consent, on eager wings, succeeds desire;
And both the lovers glow with mutual fire.