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Home  »  The English Poets  »  Extract from Cadenus and Vanessa

Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. III. The Eighteenth Century: Addison to Blake

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)

Extract from Cadenus and Vanessa

IN a glad hour Lucina’s aid

Produced on earth a wondrous maid,

On whom the Queen of Love was bent

To try a new experiment.

She threw her law-books on the shelf,

And thus debated with herself.

Since men allege, they ne’er can find

Those beauties in a female mind

Which raise a flame that will endure

For ever uncorrupt and pure;

If ’tis with reason they complain,

This infant shall restore my reign.

I ’ll search where every virtue dwells,

From courts inclusive down to cells:

What preachers talk, or sages write;

These will I gather and unite,

And represent them to mankind

Collected in that infant’s mind.

This said, she plucks in Heaven’s high bowers

A sprig of amaranthine flowers.

In nectar thrice infuses bays,

Three times refined in Titan’s rays;

Then calls the Graces to her aid,

And sprinkles thrice the newborn maid:

From whence the tender skin assumes

A sweetness above all perfumes:

From whence a cleanliness remains,

Incapable of outward stains:

From whence that decency of mind,

So lovely in the female kind,

Where not one careless thought intrudes

Less modest than the speech of prudes;

Where never blush was call’d in aid,

That spurious virtue in a maid,

A virtue but at second-hand;

They blush because they understand.

The Graces next would act their part,

And show’d but little of their art;

Their work was half already done,

The child with native beauty shone;

The outward form no help required:

Each, breathing on her thrice, inspired

That gentle, soft, engaging air,

Which in old times adorn’d the fair:

And said, ‘Vanessa be the name

By which thou shalt be known to fame:

Vanessa, by the gods enroll’d:

Her name on earth shall not be told.’