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Mixt with the mourning willow's careful grey,
Where reverend Cham cuts out his famous way,
The melancholy Cowley lay:

And lo! a Muse appear'd to 's closed sight,
(The Muses oft in lands of vision play)
Body'd, array'd, and seen, by an internal light.
A golden harp with silver strings she bore;
A wondrous hieroglyphic robe she wore,
In which all colours and all figures were,
That Nature or that Fancy can create,
That Art can never imitate;

And with loose pride it wanton'd in the air.
In such a dress, in such a well-cloth'd dream,
She us'd, of old, near fair Ismenus' stream,
Pindar, her Theban favourite, to meet;

A crown was on her head, and wings were on her fect.

She touch'd him with her harp, and rais'd him from the ground;

The shaken strings melodiously resound.

"Art thou return'd at last," said she, "To this forsaken place and me? Thou prodigal! who didst so loosely waste Of all thy youthful years the good estate; Art thou return'd here, to repent too late, And gather husks of learning up at last, Now the rich harvest time of life is past,

And Winter marches on so fast?

But, when I meant t'adopt thee for my son,
And did as learn'd a portion assign,
As ever any of the mighty Nine

Had to their dearest children done;
When I resolv'd t'exalt thy anointed name,
Among the spiritual lords of peaceful fame ;
Thou, changeling! thou, bewitch'd with noise and

show,

Would'st into courts and cities from me go;
Would'st see the world abroad, and have a share
In all the follies and the tumults there:
Thou would'st, forsooth, be something in a state,
And business thou would'st find, and would'st
create ;

Business! the frivolous pretence

Of human lusts, to shake off innocence;

Business! the grave impertinence; Business! the thing which I of all things hate; Business! the contradiction of thy fate.

"Go, renegado! cast up thy account,
And see to what amount

Thy foolish gains by quitting me:
The sale of knowledge, fame, and liberty,
The fruits of thy unlearn'd apostacy.

Thou thought'st, if once the public storm were past,

All thy remaining life should sunshine be:
Behold! the public storm is spent at last,
The sovereign's tost at sea no more,
And thou, with all the noble company,
Art got at last to shore.

But, whilst thy fellow voyagers I see
All march'd up to possess the promis'd land,
Thou, still alone, alas! dost gaping stand
Upon the naked beach, upon the barren sand!

"As a fair morning of the blessed spring,

After a tedious stormy night,

Such was the glorious entry of our king;
Enriching moisture drop'd on every thing:

But then, alas! to thee alone, One of old Gideon's miracles was shown; For every tree and every herb around With pearly dew was crown'd, And upon all the quicken'd ground The fruitful seed of Heaven did brooding lie, And nothing but the Muse's fleece was dry. It did all other threats surpass,

When God to his own people said

(The men whom through long wanderings he had led)

That he would give them ev'n a heaven of brass:

They look'd up to that Heaven in vain, That bounteous Heaven, which God did not restrain

Upon the most unjust to shine and rain.

"The Rachel, for which twice seven years and more
Thou didst with faith and labour serve,
And didst (if faith and labour can) deserve,
Though she contracted was to thee,
Given to another thou didst see;
Given to another, who had store

Of fairer and of richer wives before,
And not a Leah left, thy recompense to be!
Go on; twice seven years more thy fortune try;
Twice seven years more God in his bounty may
Give thee, to fling away

Into the court's deceitful lottery:

But think how likely 'tis that thou, With the dull work of thy unwieldy plough, Should'st in a hard and barren season thrive, Should'st even able be to live;

Thou, to whose share so little bread did fall, In that miraculous year, when manna rain'd on all."

Thus spake the Muse, and spake it with a smile,
That seem'd at once to pity and revile.
And to her thus, raising his thoughtful head,
The melancholy Cowley said-
"Ah, wanton foe! dost thou upbraid
The ills which thou thyself hast made?
When in the cradle innocent I lay,
Thou, wicked spirit! stolest me away,

And my abused soul didst bear

Into thy new-found worlds, I know not where,
Thy golden Indies in the air;
And ever since I strive in vain
My ravish'd freedom to regain;

Still I rebel, still thou dost reign;

Lo! still in verse against thee I complain.
There is a sort of stubborn weeds,
Which, if the earth but once, it ever, breeds;
No wholesome herb can near them thrive,
No useful plant can keep alive:

The foolish sports I did on thee bestow,
Make all my art and labour fruitless now;
Where once such fairies dance, no grass doth ever

grow.

"When my new mind had no infusion known, Thou gav'st so deep a tincture of thine own, That ever since I vainly try

To wash away th' inherent dye:

Long work perhaps may spoil thy colours quite, But never will reduce the native white:

To all the ports of honour and of gain,

I often steer my course in vain ;

Plenty he sow'd below, and cast about him light! | Thy gale comes cross, and drives me back again,

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Thou slack'nest all my nerves of industry,
By making them so oft to be

The tinkling strings of thy lose minstrelsy.
Whoever this world's happiness would see,
Must as entirely cast off thee,

As they who only Heaven desire
Do from the world retire.

This was my errour, this my gross mistake,
Myself a demi-votary to make.

Thus, with Sapphira and her husband's fate,
(A fault which I, like them, am taught too late)
For all that I gave up I nothing gain,
And perish for the part which I retain.
"Teach me not then, O thou fallacious Muse!

The court, and better king, t' accuse:
The heaven under which I live is fair,
The fertile soil will a full harvest bear :
'Thine, thine is all the barrenness; if thou

Mak'st me sit still and sing, when I should plough.

When I but think how many a tedious year
Our patient sovereign did attend

His long misfortunes' fatal end;

How cheerfully, and how exempt from fear, On the Great Sovereign's will he did depend; I ought to be accurst, if I refuse

To wait on his, O thou fallacious Muse!

ON THE DEATH OF

MRS. KATHARINE PHILIPS. CRUEL Disease! ah, con'd not it suffice Thy old and constant spite to exercise Against the gentlest and the fairest sex, Which still thy depredations most do vex? Where still thy malice most of all (Thy malice or thy lust) does on the fairest fall? And in them most assault the fairest place, The throne of empress Beauty, ev'n the face? There was enough of that here to assuage, (One would have thought) either thy lust of

rage.

Was 't not enough, when thou, prophane Disease!
Didst on this glorious temple seize ?
Was 't not enough, like a wild zealot, there,
All the rich outward ornaments to tear,
Deface the innocent pride of beauteous images?
Was 't not enough thus rudely to defile,
But thou must quite destroy, the goodly pile?
And thy unbounded sacrilege commit
On th' inward holiest holy of her wit?
Cruel Disease! there thou mistook'st thy power,
No mine of Death can that devour;
On her embalmed name it will abide

An everlasting pyramid,

Kings have long hands, they say; and, though I As high as Heaven the top, as Earth the basis

be

So distant, they may reach at length to me.
However, of all the princes, thou
Should'st not reproach rewards for being small
or slow;

Thou! who rewardest but with popular breath,
And that too after death,"

ON

COLONEL TUKE'S TRAGI-COMEDY, THE ADVENTURES OF FIVE

HOURS,

As when our kings (lords of the spacious main)
Take in just wars a rich plate-fleet of Spain,
The rude unshapen ingots they reduce
Into a form of beauty and of use;

On which the conqueror's image now does shine,
Not his whom it belong'd to in the mine:
So, in the mild contentions of the Muse,
(The war which Peace itself loves and pursues)
So have you home to us in triumph brought
This cargazon of Spain with treasures fraught,
You have not basely gotten it by stealth,
Nor by translation borrow'd all its wealth;
But by a powerful spirit made it your own;
Metal before, money by you 'tis grown.
'Tis current now, by your adorning it
With the fair stamp of your victorious wit.
But, though we praise this voyage of your
mind,

And though ourselves enrich'd by it we find ;
We're not contented yet, because we know
What greater stores at home within it grow,
We've seen how well you foreign ores refine;
Produce the gold of your own nobler mine:
The world shall then our native plenty view,
And fetch materials for their wit from you;
They all shall watch the travails of your pen,
And Spain on you shall make reprisals then,

wide.

All ages past record, all countries now,
In various kinds such equal beauties show,

That ev'n judge Paris would not know
On whom the golden apple to bestow;
Though goddesses t' his sentence did submit,
Women and lovers would appeal from it:
Nor durst he say, of all the female race,

This is the sovereign face.

And some (though these be of a kind that's rare, That's much, ah, much less frequent than the

fair)

So equally renown'd for virtue are,

That it the mother of the gods might pose,
When the best woman for her guide she chose
But if Apollo should design
A woman laureat to make,

Without dispute he would Orinda take,

Though Sappho and the famous Nine
Stood by, and did repine.
To be a princess, or a queen,

Is great; but 'tis a greatness always seen:
The world did never but two women know,
Who, one by fraud, th' other by wit, did rise
To the two tops of spiritual dignities;
One female pope of old, one female poet now.
Of female poets, who had names of old,
Nothing is shown, but only told,
And all we hear of them perhaps may be
Male-flattery only, and male-poetry.
Few minutes did their beauty's lightning waste,
The thunder of their voice did longer last,
But that too soon was past.

The certain proofs of our Orinda's wit
In her own lasting characters are writ,
And they will long my praise of them survive,
Though long perhaps, too, that may live
The trade of glory, manag'd by the pen,
Though great it be, and every where is found,
Does bring in but small profit to us men;
"Tis, by the number of the sharers, drown'd

Orinda, on the female coasts of Fame,
Engrosses all the goods of a poetic name;
She does no partner with her see;
Does all the business there alone, which we
Are forc'd to carry on by a whole company.
But wit's like a luxuriant vine;

Unless to virtue's prop it join,

Firm and erect towards Heaven bound; Though it with beauteous leaves and pleasant fruit be crown'd,

It lies, deform'd and rotting, on the ground.
Now shame and blushes on us all,
Who our own sex superior call!
Orinda does our boasting sex out-do,
Not in wit only, but in virtue too:

She does above our best examples rise,
In hate of vice and scorn of vanities.
Never did spirit of the manly make,

And dip'd all o'er in Learning's sacred lake,
A temper more invulnerable take.

No violent passion could an entrance find
Into the tender goodness of her mind :
Through walls of stone those furious bullets may
Force their impetuous way;

When her soft breast they hit, powerless and dead they lay!

The Fame of Friendship, which so long had told
Of three or four illustrious names of old,
Till hoarse and weary with the tale she grew,
Rejoices now t' have got a new,
A new and more surprizing story,
Of fair Lucasia's and Orinda's glory.
As when a prudent man does once perceive
That in some foreign country he must live,
The language and the manners he does strive
To understand and practise here,
That he may come no stranger there:
So well Orinda did herself prepare,

In this much different clime, for her remove
To the glad world of Poetry and Love.

HYMN TO LIGHT.

FIRST-born of Chaos, who so fair didst come

From the old Negro's darksome womb!
Which, when it saw the lovely child,
The melancholy mass put on kind looks and
smil'd;

Thou tide of glory, which no rest dost know,
But ever ebb and ever flow!

Thou golden shower of a true Jove!

Who does in thee descend, and Heaven to Earth make love!

Hail, active Nature's watchful life and health!

Her joy, her ornament, and wealth!
Hail to thy husband, Heat, and thee!
Thou the world's beauteous bride, the lusty
bridegroom he!

Say from what golden quivers of the sky
Do all thy winged arrows fly?
Swiftness and Power by birth are thine :
From thy great sire they came, thy sire, the
Word Divine,

Tis, I believe, this archery to show,

That so much cost in colours them,

And skill in painting, dost bestow, Upon thy ancient arms, the gaudy heavenly bow.

Swift as light thoughts their empty career run,
Thy race is finish'd when begun;
Let a post-angel start with thee,

And thou the goal of Earth shalt reach as soon as he.

Thou in the Moon's bright chariot, proud and gay,
Dost thy bright wood of stars survey;
And all the year dost with thee bring
Of thousand flowery lights thine own nocturnal
spring.

Thou, Scythian-like, dost round thy lands above
The Sun's gilt tents for ever move,
And still, as thou in pomp dost go,
The shining pageants of the world attend thy
show.

Nor amidst all these triumphs dost thou scern
The humble glow-worms to adorn,
And with those living spangles gild
(O greatness without pride!) the bushes of the

field.

Night, and her ugly subjects, thou dost fright,
And Sleep, the lazy owl of night;
Asham'd, and fearful to appear,
They screen their horrid shapes with the black
hemisphere.

With them there hastes, and wildly takes th' alarm,

Of painted dreams a busy swarm:
At the first opening of thine eye

The various clusters break, the antic atoms fly.
The guilty serpents, and obscener beasts,

Creep, conscious, to their secret rests:
Nature to thee does reverence pay,
Ill omens and ill sights removes out of thy way.
At thy appearance, Grief itself is said

To shake his wings, and rouse his head:
And cloudy Care has often took

A gentle beamy smile, reflected from thy look.
At thy appearance, Fear itself grows bold;
Thy sun-shine melts away his cold.
Encourag'd at the sight of thee,

To the cheek colour comes, and firmness to the

knee.

Ev'n Lust, the master of a harden'd face,
Blushes, if thou be'st in the place,
To Darkness' curtains he retires;
In sympathizing night he rolls his smoky fires.
When, goddess! thou lift'st up thy waken'd
head,

Out of the morning's purple bed,

Thy quire of birds about thee play

And all the joyful world salutes the rising day.
The ghosts, and monster-spirits, that did presume
A body's privilege to assume,
Vanish again invisibly,

And bodies gain again their visibility.
All the world's bravery, that delights our eyes,
Is but thy several liveries;

Thou the rich dye on them bestow'st,
Thy nimble pencil paints this landscape as thou

go'st.

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A crimson garment in the rose thou wear'st;
A crown of studded gold thou bear'st;
The virgin-lilies, in their white,

Are clad but with the lawn of almost naked light.
The violet, Spring's little infant, stands

Girt in thy purple swaddling-bands On the fair tulip thou dost doat; Thou cloth'st it in a gay and party-colour'd coat. With flame condens'd thou do'st thy jewels fix, And solid colours in it mix: Flora herself envies to see Flowers fairer than her own, and durable as she. Ah, goddess! would thou could'st thy hand withhold,

And be less liberal to gold!

Didst thou less value to it give,

Of how much care, alas! might'st thou poor man relieve!

To me the Sun is more delightful far,

And all fair days much fairer are. But few, ah! wondrous few, there be, Who do not gold prefer, O goddess! ev'n to thee. Through the soft ways of Heaven, and air,and sea, Which open al! their pores to thee, Lie a clear river thou dost glide,

And with thy living stream through the close channels slide.

But, where firm bodies thy free course oppose,
Gently thy source the land o'erflows;
Takes there possession, and does make,
Of colours mingled light, a thick and standing
lake.

But the vast ocean of unbounded day,

In th' empyræan Heaven does stay. Thy rivers, lakes, and springs, below, From thence took first their rise, thither at last must flow.

TO THE ROYAL SOCIETY. PHILOSOPHY, the great and only heir Of all that human knowledge which has been Unforfeited by nan's rebellious sin,

Though full of years he do appear, (Philosophy, I say, and call it he, For, whatsoe'er the painter's fancy be,

It a male-virtue seems to me)

Has still been kept in nonage till of late,

Nor manag'd or enjoy'd his vast estate.

Instead of carrying him to see
The riches which do hoarded for him lie.
In Nature's endless treasury,

They chose his eye to entertain

(His curious but not covetous eye) With painted scenes and pageants of the brain. Some few exalted spirits this latter age has shown,

That labour'd to assert the liberty

(From guardians who were now usurpers grown)
Of this old minor still, captiv'd Philosophy;
But 'twas rebellion call'd, to fight
For such a long-oppressed right.
Bacon at last, a mighty man, arose,

(Whom a wise king, and Nature, chose,
Lord chancellor of both their laws)
And boldly undertook the injur'd pupil's cause.
Authority-which did a body boast,

Though 'twas but air condens'd, and stalk'd

about,

Like some old giant's more gigantic ghost,

To terrify the learned rout

With the plain magic of true Reason's light-
He chas'd out of our sight;

Nor suffer'd living men to be misled

By the vain shadows of the dead: To graves, from whence it rose, the conquer'd phantom fled.

He broke that monstrous god which stood
In midst of th' orchard, and the whole did claim;
Which with a useless scythe of wood,
And something else not worth a name,
(Both vast for show, yet neither fit
Or to defend, or to beget;

Ridiculous and senseless terrours!) made
Children and superstitious men afraid.
The orchard's open now, and free,

Bacon has broke the scare-crow deity:
Come, enter, all that will,

Behold the ripen'd fruit, come gather now your

fill!

Yet still, methinks, we fain would be

Catching at the forbidden tree

We would be like the Deity

When truth and falsehood, good and evil, we,

Without the senses' aid, within ourselves would

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thought,

Three or four thousand years, one would have (Though we our thoughts from them perversely

thought,

To ripeness and perfection might have brought
A science so well bred and nurst,
And of such hopeful parts too at the first:
But, oh! the guardians and the tutors, then
(Some negligent and some ambitious men)

Would ne'er consent to set him free,
Or his own natural powers to let him see,
Lest that should put an end to their authority.
That his own business he might quite forget,
They' amus'd him with the sports of wanton wit;
With the deserts of poetry they fed him,
Instead of solid meats t' increase his force;
Instead of vigorous exercise, they led him
Into the pleasant labyrinths of ever-fresh dis-

course;

drew)

To things, the mind's right object, he it brought:
Like foolish birds, to painted grapes we flew;
He sought and gather'd for our use the true;
And, when on heaps the chosen bunches lay,
He prest them wisely the mechanic way,
Till all their juice did in one vessel join,
Ferment into a nourishment divine,

The thirsty soul's refreshing wine.
Who to the life an exact piece would make,
Must not from others' work a copy take;

No, not from Rubens or Vandyke;
Much less content himself to make it like
Th' ideas and the images which lie
In his own fancy or his memory.

No, he before his sight must place
The natural and living face ¿

The real object must command
Each judgment of his eye and motion of his hand.
From these and all long errours of the way
In which our wandering predecessors went,
And, like th' old Hebrews, many years did stray
In deserts, but of small extent,

Bacon, like Moses, led us forth at last:
The barren wilderness he past;
Did on the very border stand

Of the blest Promis'd land;

And from the mountain's top of his exalted wit,
Saw it himself, and show'd us it.
But life did never to one man allow
Time to discover worlds, and conquer too;
Nor can so short a line sufficient be
To fathom the vast depths of Nature's sea.
The work he did we ought t' admire;
And were unjust if we should more require
From his few years, divided 'twixt th' excess
Of low affliction and high happiness:
For who on things remote can fix his sight,
That's always in a triumph or a fight?
From you, great champions! we expect to get
These spacious countries, but discover'd yet;
Countries, where yet, instead of Nature, we
Her images and idols worship'd see:
These large and wealthy regions to subdue,
Though Learning has whole armies at command,
Quarter'd about in every land,

A better troop she ne'er together drew:
Methinks, like Gideon's little band,
God with design has pick'd out you,
To do those noble wonders by a few :

When the whole host he saw, "They are" (said he)

"Too many to o'ercome for me :"
And now he chooses out his men,
Much in the way that he did then ;
Not those many whom he found
Idly extended on the ground,
To drink with their dejected head
The stream, just so as by their mouths it fled :
No; but those few who took the waters up,
And made of their laborious hands the cup.
Thus you prepar'd, and in the glorious fight
Their wondrous pattern too you take;
Their old and empty pitchers first they brake,
And with their hands then lifted up the light.
Io! sound too the trumpets here!
Already your victorious lights appear;
New scenes of Heaven already we espy,
And crowds of golden worlds on high,
Which from the spacious plains of earth and sea
Could never yet discover'd be,

By sailors' or Chaldeans' watchful eye.
Nature's great works no distance can obscure,
No smallness her near objects can secure ;
Y' have taught the curious sight to press
Into the privatest recess

Of her imperceptible littleness!

Y' have learn'd to read her smallest hand, And well begun her deepest sense to understand! Mischief and true dishonour fall on those Who would to laughter or to scorn expose So virtuous and so noble a design,

So human for its use, for knowledge so divine. The things which these proud men despise, and call Impertinent, and vain, and small,

Those smallest things of Nature let me know, Rather than all their greatest actions do! Whoever would deposed Truth advance

Into the throne usurp'd from it, Must feel at first the blows of Ignorance, And the sharp points of envious Wit. So, when, by various turns of the celestial dance, In many thousand years

A star, so long unknown, appears, Though Heaven itself more beauteous by it grow, It troubles and alarms the world below,

Does to the wise a star, to fools a meteor, show.

With courage and success you the bold work begin;

Your cradle has not idle been :
None e'er, but Hercules and you, would be
At five years age worthy a history:
And ne'er did Fortune better yet
Th' historian to the story fit:

As you from all old errours free
And purge the body of Philosophy;
So from all modern follies he
Has vindicated Eloquence and Wit.
His candid style like a clean stream does slide,
And his bright fancy, all the way,
Does like the sun-shine in it play;
It does, like Thames, the best of rivers! glide,
Where the god does not rudely overturn,
But gently pour, the crystal urn,

And with judicious hand does the whole current guide:

'T has all the beauties Nature can impart, And all the comely dress, without the paint, of

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