Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
John Dryden. 16311700398. Ode 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, | |
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 fixt and regular, | |
Mov’d with the heaven’s majestic pace; | |
Or, call’d to more superior bliss, | 10 |
Thou tread’st with seraphims the vast abyss: | |
Whatever happy region is 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, | |
And 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 transfus’d into thy blood: | |
So wert thou born into the tuneful strain, | |
An early, rich, and inexhausted vein. | |
But if thy pre-existing soul | |
Was form’d 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 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? | 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 tun’d 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 clust’ring swarm of bees | 50 |
On thy sweet mouth distill’d their golden dew, | |
‘Twas that such vulgar miraclès | |
Heaven had not leisure to renew: | |
For all the blest fraternity of love | |
Solemniz’d there thy birth, and kept thy holiday above. | 55 |
O gracious God! how far have we | |
Profan’d thy heavenly gift of Poesy! | |
Made prostitute and profligate the Muse, | |
Debas’d to each obscene and impious use, | |
Whose harmony was first ordain’d above, | 60 |
For tongues of angels and for hymns of love! | |
O wretched we! why were we hurried down | |
This lubrique 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 unsoil’d, | |
Unmixt with foreign filth, and undefil’d; | |
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 seem’d borrow’d, 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 play’d 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…. | |
Now all those charms, that blooming grace, | |
The well-proportion’d shape, and beauteous face, | |
Shall never more be seen by mortal eyes; | 90 |
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, | |
To sweep at once her life and beauty too; | 95 |
But, like a harden’d felon, took a pride | |
To work more mischievously slow, | |
And plunder’d first, and then destroy’d. | |
O double sacrilege on things divine, | |
To rob the relic, and deface the shrine! | 100 |
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 | |
His waving streamers to the winds displays, | 105 |
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, | |
Alas, thou know’st not, thou art wreck’d at home! | 110 |
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 kindl’d star, | |
If any sparkles than the rest more bright, | 115 |
‘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 Jehoshaphat, | |
The judging God shall close the book of Fate, | 120 |
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; | |
When sinews o’er the skeletons are spread, | 125 |
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, | 130 |
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 learn’d below. |