When grey Aurora, having vanquished night,
Beheld me on the ever-fragrant hill
Of steep Hymettus, and against my will,
As I my toils extended, bare me thence.
[17] Cynthia prolonged the sleep of Endymion, a shepherd of singular beauty, that she might kiss him without his knowledge.
[18] Scrope is pleasing here:
Oh! let me once more see those eyes of thine!
Thy love I ask not; do but suffer mine.—Wakefield.
Pope's couplet was as follows in the MS.:
Thy love I ask not to forsaken me,
All that I ask is but to doat on thee.
"Scrope melius hic," wrote Cromwell, and though Pope altered the lines the remark of Cromwell remains true.
[19] Ruffhead observes, that this line is superior to the original,
Aspice, quam sit in hoc multa litura loco;
which he thinks flat and languid: but the simplicity of the appeal to the blot on her paper is admirable, and should be only mentioned as a fact. The imitator has destroyed the whole beauty of the line, by a quaint antithesis, and a laboured arrangement of words, which are not natural in affliction. Scrope's translation again excels Pope's: