* * * * *

_To_ PHILANDER.

After I had dismissed my page this morning with my letter, I walked
(filled with sad soft thoughts of my brother _Philander_) into the
grove, and commanding _Melinda_ to retire, who only attended me, I
threw myself down on that bank of grass where we last disputed the
dear, but fatal business of our souls: where our prints (that invited
me) still remain on the pressed greens: there with ten thousand sighs,
with remembrance of the tender minutes we passed then, I drew your
last letter from my bosom, and often kissed, and often read it over;
but oh! who can conceive my torment, when I came to that fatal part of
it, where you say you gave your hand to my sister? I found my soul
agitated with a thousand different passions, but all insupportable,
all mad and raving; sometimes I threw myself with fury on the ground,
and pressed my panting heart to the earth; then rise in rage, and tear
my heart, and hardly spare that face that taught you first to love;
then fold my wretched arms to keep down rising sighs that almost rend
my breast, I traverse swiftly the conscious grove; with my distracted
show'ring eyes directed in vain to pitiless heaven, the lovely silent
shade favouring my complaints, I cry aloud, Oh God! _Philander_'s,
married, the lovely charming thing for whom I languish is
married!--That fatal word's enough, I need not add to whom. Married is
enough to make me curse my birth, my youth, my beauty, and my eyes
that first betrayed me to the undoing object: curse on the charms you
have flattered, for every fancied grace has helped my ruin on; now,
like flowers that wither unseen and unpossessed in shades, they must
die and be no more, they were to no end created, since _Philander_ is
married: married! Oh fate, oh hell, oh torture and confusion! Tell me