Book I, Elegy 17

Deservedly, since I have had the heart to fly from my mistress, do I now cry to the lonely sea-mews, nor shall Cassiope give her wonted welcome to my bark, and all my prayers fall idly on a heartless shore. Nay, more, though thou art far away the winds but aid thy cruelty: lo! what fierce threats the gale howls in my ear! Will Fortune never come to still the tempest? Shall yonder scanty sands hide my bones?

Yet do thou but change thy savage complaints to kinder tones; let the dark night and threatening shoals be in thine eyes enough punishment for me. Wilt have the heart dry-eyed to demand my death and ne'er to hold mine ashes to thy bosom? Perish the man, whoe'er he was, that first devised ships and sails, and first voyaged over the unwilling deep! Easier task had it been to overcome my mistress' heart — cruel was she, yet peerless among women! — than thus to gaze on shores fringed with unknown forests and seek in vain for the desired sons of Tyndareus.

If some doom had buried all my grief at home, if there my love had ended and at the last the headstone marked its close, then would she have cast those locks I loved so well upon my pyre, and have laid my bones on a soft couch of delicate rose-leaves: she would have cried my name aloud over my last ashes, praying that earth might lie light upon me.