Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 13.djvu/433

Rh I am already alarmed with your excuse of deafness and dizziness. Yielding to such a complaint, always strengthens it; exerting against it, generally lessens it. Do not immerge in the sole enjoyment of yourself. Is not a friend the medicine of life? I am sure it is the comfort of it. And I hope you still admit such companions as are capable of administering it. In that number I know I am unworthy of rank: however, my best wishes shall attend you.

I have enclosed some verses. The Latin I believe will please you; one of the translations may have the same fortune, the other cannot. The verses written in the lady's book is, A Lamentable Hymn to Death, from a lover, inscribed to his mistress. I have made the author of it vain (who I am sure had never read Pope's Heloise to Abelard) in telling him his six last lines seem a parody on six of Pope's. They are on the other side, that you may not be at a loss.

Then too, when fate shall thy fair frame destroy, That cause of all my guilt, and all my joy, In trance extatick may thy pangs be drown'd, Bright clouds descend, and angels watch thee round; From opening skies may streaming glories shine, And saints embrace thee with a love like mine.

I think the whole letter the most passionate I ever read, except Heloise's own, on the subject of love. I am equally struck with Cadenus to Vanessa. I have often soothed my love with both, when I brave been in a fit.

I will conclude with the above wish, and the Rh