[33] These two lines have been quoted as the most smooth and mellifluous in our language; and they are supposed to derive their sweetness and harmony from the mixture of so many iambics. Pope himself preferred the following line to all he had written, with respect to harmony:
Lo, where Mæotis sleeps, and hardly flows.—Warton.
Dryden in his Annus Mirabilis:
A constant trade-wind will securely blow,
And gently lay us on the spicy shore.—Wakefield.
[34] In the MS.:
To those steep cliffs, that ocean must I fly.
[35] In the place of this couplet, there were four lines in the MS.:
If thou return thy Sappho too shall stay,
Not all the gods shall force me then away;
Nor Love, nor Phœbus, then invoked shall be,
For thou alone art all the gods to me.
Another version ran thus:
Wouldst thou return, oh more than Phœbus, fair
No god like thee could ease thy Sappho's care.