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,