| THOU youngest virgin-daughter of the skies, | |
| Made in the last promotion of the blest; | |
| Whose palms, new pluck'd from Paradise, | |
| In spreading branches more sublimely rise, | |
| Rich with immortal green above the rest: | 5 |
| Whether, adopted to some neighbouring star, | |
| Thou roll'st above us, in thy wandering race, | |
| Or, in procession fixt and regular, | |
| Mov'd with the heaven's majestic pace; | |
| Or, call'd to more superior bliss, | 10 |
| Thou tread'st with seraphims the vast abyss: | |
| Whatever happy region is thy place, | |
| Cease thy celestial song a little space; | |
| Thou wilt have time enough for hymns divine, | |
| Since Heaven's eternal year is thine. | 15 |
| Hear, then, a mortal Muse thy praise rehearse, | |
| In no ignoble verse; | |
| But such as thy own voice did practise here, | |
| When thy first-fruits of Poesy were given, | |
| To make thyself a welcome inmate there; | 20 |
| While yet a young probationer, | |
| And candidate of heaven. | |
| |
| If by traduction came thy mind, | |
| Our wonder is the less, to find | |
| A soul so charming from a stock so good; | 25 |
| Thy father was transfus'd into thy blood: | |
| So wert thou born into the tuneful strain, | |
| An early, rich, and inexhausted vein. | |
| But if thy pre-existing soul | |
| Was form'd at first with myriads more, | 30 |
| It did through all the mighty poets roll | |
| Who Greek or Latin laurels wore, | |
| And was that Sappho last, which once it was before. | |
| If so, then cease thy flight, O heaven-born mind! | |
| Thou hast no dross to purge from thy rich ore: | 35 |
| Nor can thy soul a fairer mansion find, | |
| Than was the beauteous frame she left behind: | |
| Return, to fill or mend the quire of thy celestial kind. | |
| |
| May we presume to say, that, at thy birth, | |
| New joy was sprung in heaven as well as here on earth? | 40 |
| For sure the milder planets did combine | |
| On thy auspicious horoscope to shine, | |
| And even the most malicious were in trine. | |
| Thy brother-angels at thy birth | |
| Strung each his lyre, and tun'd it high, | 45 |
| That all the people of the sky | |
| Might know a poetess was born on earth; | |
| And then, if ever, mortal ears | |
| Had heard the music of the spheres. | |
| And if no clust'ring swarm of bees | 50 |
| On thy sweet mouth distill'd their golden dew, | |
| 'Twas that such vulgar miraclès | |
| Heaven had not leisure to renew: | |
| For all the blest fraternity of love | |
| Solemniz'd there thy birth, and kept thy holiday above. | 55 |
| |
| O gracious God! how far have we | |
| Profan'd thy heavenly gift of Poesy! | |
| Made prostitute and profligate the Muse, | |
| Debas'd to each obscene and impious use, | |
| Whose harmony was first ordain'd above, | 60 |
| For tongues of angels and for hymns of love! | |
| O wretched we! why were we hurried down | |
| This lubrique and adulterate age | |
| (Nay, added fat pollutions of our own), | |
| To increase the streaming ordures of the stage? | 65 |
| What can we say to excuse our second fall? | |
| Let this thy Vestal, Heaven, atone for all! | |
| Her Arethusian stream remains unsoil'd, | |
| Unmixt with foreign filth, and undefil'd; | |
| Her wit was more than man, her innocence a child. | 70 |
| |
| Art she had none, yet wanted none, | |
| For Nature did that want supply: | |
| So rich in treasures of her own, | |
| She might our boasted stores defy: | |
| Such noble vigour did her verse adorn, | 75 |
| That it seem'd borrow'd, where 'twas only born. | |
| Her morals, too, were in her bosom bred, | |
| By great examples daily fed, | |
| What in the best of books, her father's life, she read. | |
| And to be read herself she need not fear; | 80 |
| Each test, and every light, her Muse will bear, | |
| Though Epictetus with his lamp were there. | |
| Even love (for love sometimes her Muse exprest) | |
| Was but a lambent flame which play'd about her breast, | |
| Light as the vapours of a morning dream; | 85 |
| So cold herself, whilst she such warmth exprest, | |
| 'Twas Cupid bathing in Diana's stream.... | |
| |
| Now all those charms, that blooming grace, | |
| The well-proportion'd shape, and beauteous face, | |
| Shall never more be seen by mortal eyes; | 90 |
| In earth the much-lamented virgin lies. | |
| Not wit, nor piety could fate prevent; | |
| Nor was the cruel destiny content | |
| To finish all the murder at a blow, | |
| To sweep at once her life and beauty too; | 95 |
| But, like a harden'd felon, took a pride | |
| To work more mischievously slow, | |
| And plunder'd first, and then destroy'd. | |
| O double sacrilege on things divine, | |
| To rob the relic, and deface the shrine! | 100 |
| But thus Orinda died: | |
| Heaven, by the same disease, did both translate; | |
| As equal were their souls, so equal was their fate. | |
| |
| Meantime, her warlike brother on the seas | |
| His waving streamers to the winds displays, | 105 |
| And vows for his return, with vain devotion, pays. | |
| Ah, generous youth! that wish forbear, | |
| The winds too soon will waft thee here! | |
| Slack all thy sails, and fear to come, | |
| Alas, thou know'st not, thou art wreck'd at home! | 110 |
| No more shalt thou behold thy sister's face, | |
| Thou hast already had her last embrace. | |
| But look aloft, and if thou kenn'st from far, | |
| Among the Pleiads a new kindl'd star, | |
| If any sparkles than the rest more bright, | 115 |
| 'Tis she that shines in that propitious light. | |
| |
| When in mid-air the golden trump shall sound, | |
| To raise the nations under ground; | |
| When, in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, | |
| The judging God shall close the book of Fate, | 120 |
| And there the last assizes keep | |
| For those who wake and those who sleep; | |
| When rattling bones together fly | |
| From the four corners of the sky; | |
| When sinews o'er the skeletons are spread, | 125 |
| Those cloth'd with flesh, and life inspires the dead; | |
| The sacred poets first shall hear the sound, | |
| And foremost from the tomb shall bound, | |
| For they are cover'd with the lightest ground; | |
| And straight, with inborn vigour, on the wing, | 130 |
| Like mounting larks, to the new morning sing. | |
| There thou, sweet Saint, before the quire shalt go, | |
| As harbinger of Heaven, the way to show, | |
| The way which thou so well hast learn'd below. | |
