And I said, Oh that I had wings! &c.— In the Hebrew, Who will give me wings like a dove? The dove is remarkable for the swiftness of its flight; and therefore the Psalmist, who saw himself in the extremest danger, and knew that his very life depended on his immediate escape, wishes for the swift wings of a dove, that he might with the utmost speed fly from the destruction which threatened him. Several writers have taken notice of a fine passage in Seneca's Octavia, ver. 915, &c. similar to this.
Quis mea digne deflere potest Mala? quae lacrimis nostris questus Reddet Aedon? Cujus pennas Utinam miserae mihi fata darent! Fugerem luctus ablata meos Penna volucri, procul et coetus Hominum tristes, coedemque feram Sola in vacuo nemore, et tenui Ramo pendens, querulo possem Gutture moestum fundere murmur.*
* Who can find terms suitable to the lamentation of my evil state? Not even Aedon† can do justice by her plaint to the tears that I shed! whose wings, indeed, I fain would wear, if the destinies were pleased to grant them. Borne on rapid pinions, I would leave my mourning mates, and avoid the cruel society and persecution of men. Then, sitting solitarily in a grove, perched upon a bending twig, with plaintive throat, I might pour my heavy murmuring notes around.
† The daughter of Pandarus; and wife of king Zethus, who envying Niobe, the wife of Amphion, (her husband's brother.) because she had more children than herself, resolved to murder the eldest, who was educated with her own son Itylus; by mistake she killed Itylus, and is fabled as having been changed into a nightingale, that she might sing her child's dirge.