KATHERINE PHILIPS (ORINDA') 397. To One persuading a Lady to Marriage 1631-1664 FORBEAR, bold youth; all's heaven here, And what you do aver To others courtship may appear, 'Tis sacrilege to her. She is a public deity; And were 't not very odd First make the sun in private shine That so he may his beams confine In compliment to you: But if of that you do despair, Think how you did amiss To strive to fix her beams which are JOHN DRYDEN 398. Ode 1631-1700 To the Pious Memory of the accomplished young lady, Mrs. Anne Killigrew, excellent in the two sister arts of Poesy and Painting THOU youngest virgin-daughter of the skies, Made in the last promotion of the blest; Whose palms, new pluck'd from Paradise, Rich with immortal green above the rest: Hear, then, a mortal Muse thy praise rehearse, But such as thy own voice did practise here, And candidate of heaven. If by traduction came thy mind, A soul so charming from a stock so good; Was form'd at first with myriads more, 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: 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? Strung each his lyre, and tun'd it high, Might know a poetess was born on earth; And then, if ever, mortal ears Had heard the music of the spheres. On thy sweet mouth distill'd their golden dew, Heaven had not leisure to renew: For all the blest fraternity of love Solemniz'd there thy birth, and kept thy holiday above. O gracious God! how far have we (Nay, added fat pollutions of our own), To increase the streaming ordures of the stage? What can we say to excuse our second fall? Let this thy Vestal, Heaven, atone for all! Unmixt with foreign filth, and undefil'd; Her wit was more than man, her innocence a child. Art she had none, yet wanted none, She might our boasted stores defy: That it seem'd borrow'd, where 'twas only born. 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; 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; So cold herself, whilst she such warmth exprest, 'Twas Cupid bathing in Diana's stream. Now all those charms, that blooming grace, To work more mischievously slow, To rob the relic, and deface the shrine! 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 The winds too soon will waft thee here! Alas, thou know'st not, thou art wreck'd at home! When in mid-air the golden trump shall sound, When, in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, The judging God shall close the book of Fate, For those who wake and those who sleep; From the four corners of the sky; When sinews o'er the skeletons are spread, 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. |