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"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 :

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"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! "Kings have long hands, they say; and, though I be "So distant, they may reach at length to me.

"However, of all princes, thou

"Shouldst 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 't is grown.
"T is 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.

ON THE DEATH OF

MRS. KATHARINE PHILIPS.

CRUEL Disease! ah, could 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 or rage.
Was 't not enough, when thou, profane 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

As An everlasting pyramid, ith the basis wide. }

As high as heaven the top, as earth the basis 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 't is 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.

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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,
Ingrosses all the goods of a poetick 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 dipp'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 :

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