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.
'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.
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
An everlasting pyramid,
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 this 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
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.
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;
"T is, 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
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:
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 surprising 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.
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!
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