O launch thy bark, fecure of profp'rous gales;
Cupid for thee shall spread the swelling fails.
If you will fly --- (yet ah! what cause can be,
Too cruel youth, that you should fly from me?)
If not from Phaon I must hope for ease,
Ah let me seek it from the raging feas:
To raging feas unpity'd I'll remove,
And either cease to live or cease to love!

256

ELOISA

то

A BELARD.

ARGUMENT.

BELARD and Eloifa flourished in the twelfth

A Century; they were two of the moft diftin

guished perfons of their age in learning and beauty, but for nothing more famous than for their unfortunate paffion. After a long courfe of calamities, they retired each to a feveral Convent, and confecrated the remainder of their days to religion. It was many years after this separation, that a letter of Abelard's to a Friend, which contained the history of his misfortune, fell into the hands of Eloifa. This awakening all her tenderness, occafioned those celebrated letters (out of which the following is partly extracted) which give fo lively a picture of the struggles of grace and nature, virtue and paffion. P.