THOU youngest virgin-daughter of the skies, | |
| Made in the last promotion of the blest; | |
| Whose palms, new plucked 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 fixed and regular | |
| Moved with the heaven’s majestic pace; | |
| Or, called to more superior bliss, | 10 |
| Thou tread’st with seraphims the vast abyss: | |
| Whatever happy region be 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, | |
| A 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 transfused into thy blood: | |
| So wert thou born into a tuneful strain, | |
| An early, rich, and inexhausted vein. | |
| But if thy pre-existing soul | |
| Was formed 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 beautious 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 tuned 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 clustering swarm of bees | 50 |
| On thy sweet mouth distilled their golden dew, | |
| ’Twas that such vulgar miracles | |
| Heaven had not leisure to renew: | |
| For all the blest fraternity of love | |
| Solemnised there thy birth, and kept thy holiday above. | 55 |
| |
| O gracious God! how far have we | |
| Profaned thy heavenly gift of Poesy! | |
| Made prostitute and profligate the Muse, | |
| Debased to each obscene and impious use, | |
| Whose harmony was first ordained above, | 60 |
| For tongues of angels and for hymns of love! | |
| O wretched we! why were we hurried down | |
| This lubric 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 unsoiled, | |
| Unmixed with foreign filth, and undefiled; | |
| 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 seemed borrowed, 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 played 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. | |
| |
| Born to the spacious empire of the Nine, | |
| One would have thought she should have been content | |
| To manage well that mighty government; | 90 |
| But what can young ambitious souls confine? | |
| To the next realm she stretched her sway, | |
| For Painture near adjoining lay, | |
| A plenteous province and alluring prey. | |
| A Chamber of Dependences was framed, | 95 |
| (As conquerors will never want pretence, | |
| When armed, to justify the offence), | |
| And the whole fief in right of Poetry she claimed. | |
| The country open lay without defence; | |
| For poets frequent inroads there had made, | 100 |
| And perfectly could represent | |
| The shape, the face, with every lineament, | |
| And all the large demains which the dumb Sister swayed, | |
| All bowed beneath her government; | |
| Received in triumph wheresoe’er she went. | 105 |
| Her pencil drew whate’er her soul designed, | |
| And oft the happy draught surpassed the image in her mind | |
| The sylvan scenes of herds and flocks | |
| And fruitful plains and barren rocks; | |
| Of shallow brooks that flowed so clear, | 110 |
| The bottom did the top appear; | |
| Of deeper too and ampler floods | |
| Which, as in mirrors, showed the woods; | |
| Of lofty trees, with sacred shades, | |
| And perspectives of pleasant glades, | 115 |
| Where nymphs of brightest form appear, | |
| With shaggy satyrs standing near, | |
| Which them at once admire and fear. | |
| The ruins too of some majestic piece, | |
| Boasting the power of ancient Rome, or Greece, | 120 |
| Whose statues, friezes, columns, broken lie, | |
| And, though defaced, the wonder of the eye; | |
| What nature, art, bold fiction, e’er durst frame, | |
| Her forming hand gave feature to the name. | |
| So strange a concourse ne’er was seen before, | 125 |
| But when the peopled ark the whole creation bore. | |
| |
| The scene then changed; with bold erected look | |
| Our martial King 2 the sight with reverence strook: | |
| For, not content t’ express his outward part, | |
| Her hand called out the image of his heart: | 130 |
| His warlike mind, his soul devoid of fear, | |
| His high-designing thoughts were figured there, | |
| As when by magic ghosts are made t’appear. | |
| Our Phœnix queen 3 was portrayed too so bright, | |
| Beauty alone could beauty take so right: | 135 |
| Her dress, her shape, her matchless grace, | |
| Were all observed, as well as heavenly face. | |
| With such a peerless majesty she stands, | |
| As in that day she took the crown from sacred hands; | |
| Before a train of heroines was seen, | 140 |
| In beauty foremost, as in rank the queen. | |
| Thus nothing to her genius was denied, | |
| But like a ball of fire, the further thrown, | |
| Still with a greater blaze she shone, | |
| And her bright soul broke out on every side. | 145 |
| What next she had designed, Heaven only knows: | |
| To such immoderate growth her conquest rose | |
| That Fate alone its progress could oppose. | |
| |
| Now all those charms, that blooming grace, | |
| The well-proportioned shape and beautious face, | 150 |
| Shall never more be seen by mortal eyes; | |
| 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, | 155 |
| To sweep at once her life and beauty too; | |
| But, like a hardened felon, took a pride | |
| To work more mischievously slow, | |
| And plundered first, and then destroyed. | |
| O double sacrilege on things divine, | 160 |
| To rob the relic, and deface the shrine! | |
| But thus Orinda died: 4 | |
| Heaven, by the same disease did both translate; | |
| As equal was their souls, so equal was their fate. | |
| |
| Meantime, her warlike brother on the seas | 165 |
| His waving streamers to the winds displays, | |
| 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; | 170 |
| Alas! thou know’st not, thou art wrecked at home | |
| 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-kindled star, | 175 |
| If any sparkles than the rest more bright, | |
| ’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 Jehosaphat | 180 |
| The judging God shall close the book of Fate, | |
| 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; | 185 |
| When sinews o’er the skeletons are spread, | |
| Those clothed 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 covered with the lightest ground; | 190 |
| And straight, with inborn vigour, on the wing, | |
| 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 learned below. | 195 |
