O nce I beheld the fairest of her kind,
And still the sweet idea charms my mind:
True, she was dumb; for nature gazed so long,
Pleased with her work, that she forgot her tongue;
But, smiling, said—She still shall gain the prize;
I only have transferred it to her eyes.
Such are thy pictures, Kneller, such thy skill,
That nature seems obedient to thy will;
Comes out, and meets thy pencil in the draught,
Lives there, and wants but words to speak her thought.
}
{ At least thy pictures look a voice; and we
{ Imagine sounds, deceived to that degree,
{ We think 'tis somewhat more than just to see.
Shadows are but privations of the light;
Yet, when we walk, they shoot before the sight;
With us approach, retire, arise, and fall;
Nothing themselves, and yet expressing all.
Such are thy pieces, imitating life
So near, they almost conquer in the strife;
And from their animated canvas came,
Demanding souls, and loosened from the frame.
Prometheus, were he here, would cast away
His Adam, and refuse a soul to clay;
And either would thy noble work inspire,
Or think it warm enough, without his fire.
But vulgar hands may vulgar likeness raise;
This is the least attendant on thy praise:
From hence the rudiments of art began;
A coal, or chalk, first imitated man:
Perhaps the shadow, taken on a wall,
Gave outlines to the rude original;
}
{ Ere canvas yet was strained, before the grace
{ Of blended colours found their use and place,
{ Or cypress tablets first received a face.
By slow degrees the godlike art advanced;
As man grew polished, picture was enhanced:
Greece added posture, shade, and perspective,
And then the mimic piece began to live.
Yet perspective was lame, no distance true,
But all came forward in one common view:
No point of light was known, no bounds of art;
When light was there, it knew not to depart,
But glaring on remoter objects played;
Not languished and insensibly decayed.[74]
Rome raised not art, but barely kept alive,
And with old Greece unequally did strive;
Till Goths and Vandals, a rude northern race,
Did all the matchless monuments deface.
Then all the Muses in one ruin lie,
And rhyme began to enervate poetry.
Thus, in a stupid military state,
The pen and pencil find an equal fate.
Flat faces, such as would disgrace a skreen,
Such as in Bantam's embassy were seen,
Unraised, unrounded, were the rude delight
Of brutal nations, only born to fight.
Long time the sister arts, in iron sleep,
A heavy sabbath did supinely keep;
At length, in Raphael's age, at once they rise,
Stretch all their limbs, and open all their eyes.
Thence rose the Roman, and the Lombard line;
One coloured best, and one did best design.
Raphael's, like Homer's, was the nobler part,
But Titian's painting looked like Virgil's art.
Thy genius gives thee both; where true design,
Postures unforced, and lively colours join,
Likeness is ever there; but still the best,
(Like proper thoughts in lofty language drest,)
Where light, to shades descending, plays, not strives,
Dies by degrees, and by degrees revives.
Of various parts a perfect whole is wrought;
Thy pictures think, and we divine their thought.
Shakespeare, thy gift, I place before my sight;[75]
With awe, I ask his blessing ere I write;
With reverence look on his majestic face;
Proud to be less, but of his godlike race.
His soul inspires me, while thy praise I write,
And I, like Teucer, under Ajax fight;
Bids thee, through me, be bold; with dauntless breast
Contemn the bad, and emulate the best.
Like his, thy critics in the attempt are lost;
When most they rail, know then, they envy most.
In vain they snarl aloof; a noisy crowd,
Like women's anger, impotent and loud.
While they their barren industry deplore,
Pass on secure, and mind the goal before,
Old as she is, my muse shall march behind,
Bear off the blast, and intercept the wind.
Our arts are sisters, though not twins in birth,
For hymns were sung in Eden's happy earth:
But oh, the painter muse, though last in place,
Has seized the blessing first, like Jacob's race.
}
{ Apelles' art an Alexander found,
{ And Raphael did with Leo's gold abound;
{ But Homer was with barren laurel crowned.
Thou hadst thy Charles a while, and so had I;
But pass we that unpleasing image by.
Rich in thyself, and of thyself divine,
All pilgrims come and offer at thy shrine.
A graceful truth thy pencil can command;
The fair themselves go mended from thy hand.
Likeness appears in every lineament,
But likeness in thy work is eloquent.
Though nature there her true resemblance bears,
A nobler beauty in thy piece appears.
So warm thy work, so glows the generous frame,
Flesh looks less living in the lovely dame.
}
{ Thou paint'st as we describe, improving still,
{ When on wild nature we ingraft our skill,
{ Yet not creating beauties at our will.
But poets are confined in narrower space,
To speak the language of their native place;
The painter widely stretches his command,
Thy pencil speaks the tongue of every land.
From hence, my friend, all climates are your own,
Nor can you forfeit, for you hold of none.
}
{ All nations all immunities will give
{ To make you theirs, where'er you please to live;
{ And not seven cities, but the world, would strive.
Sure some propitious planet then did smile,
When first you were conducted to this isle;
Our genius brought you here, to enlarge our fame,
For your good stars are every where the same.
Thy matchless hand, of every region free,
Adopts our climate, not our climate thee.
[76]Great Rome and Venice early did impart
To thee the examples of their wonderous art.
Those masters, then but seen, not understood,
With generous emulation fired thy blood;
For what in nature's dawn the child admired,
The youth endeavoured, and the man acquired.
If yet thou hast not reached their high degree,
'Tis only wanting to this age, not thee.
}
{ Thy genius, bounded by the times, like mine,
{ Drudges on petty draughts, nor dare design
{ A more exalted work, and more divine.
For what a song, or senseless opera,
Is to the living labour of a play;
Or what a play to Virgil's work would be,
Such is a single piece to history.
But we, who life bestow, ourselves must live;
Kings cannot reign, unless their subjects give;
And they, who pay the taxes, bear the rule:
Thus thou, sometimes, art forced to draw a fool;[77]
But so his follies in thy posture sink,
The senseless idiot seems at last to think.
Good heaven! that sots and knaves should be so vain,
To wish their vile resemblance may remain,
And stand recorded, at their own request,
To future days, a libel or a jest!
Else should we see your noble pencil trace
Our unities of action, time, and place;
A whole composed of parts, and those the best,
With every various character exprest;
Heroes at large, and at a nearer view;
Less, and at distance, an ignoble crew;
While all the figures in one action join,
As tending to complete the main design.
More cannot be by mortal art exprest,
But venerable age shall add the rest:
For time shall with his ready pencil stand,
Retouch your figures with his ripening hand,
Mellow your colours, and imbrown the teint,
Add every grace, which time alone can grant;
To future ages shall your fame convey,
And give more beauties than he takes away.
UPON THE DEATH OF LORD HASTINGS.
The subject of this elegy was Henry Lord Hastings, eldest son
of Ferdinando Earl of Huntingdon. He was born 16th January,
1630, and died 24th June, 1649. He was buried at Ashby de la
Zouche, near the superb family-seat of Donnington-Castle. This
Lord Hastings, says Collins, was a nobleman of great learning,
and of so sweet a disposition, that no less than ninety-eight
elegies were made on him, and published in 1650, under this
title: "Lachrymæ Musarum, the Tears of the Muses expressed
in Elegies written by divers Persons of nobility and worth, upon
the Death of the most hopeful Henry, Lord Hastings, eldest
son of the Right Honourable Ferdinando, Earl of Huntingdon,
then general of the high-born Prince George, Duke of Clarence,
brother to King Edward IV."
This accomplished young nobleman died unmarried; but, from
the concluding lines of the elegy, it is obvious, that he had been
betrothed to the "virgin widow," whom the poet there addresses,
but whose name I have been unable to learn.
The poem was written by Dryden while at Westminster-school,
and displays little or no promise of future excellence; being a
servile imitation of the conceits of Cleveland, and the metaphysical
wit of Cowley, exerted in numbers hardly more harmonious
than those of Donne.
UPON
THE DEATH
OF
LORD HASTINGS.
M ust noble Hastings immaturely die,
The honour of his ancient family,
Beauty and learning thus together meet,
To bring a winding for a wedding-sheet?
Must virtue prove death's harbinger? must she,
With him expiring, feel mortality?
Is death, sin's wages, grace's now? shall art
Make us more learned, only to depart?
If merit be disease; if virtue, death;
To be good, not to be; who'd then bequeath
Himself to discipline? who'd not esteem
Labour a crime? study self-murder deem?
Our noble youth now have pretence to be
Dunces securely, ignorant healthfully.
Rare linguist, whose worth speaks itself, whose praise,
Though not his own, all tongues besides do raise:
Than whom great Alexander may seem less,
Who conquered men, but not their languages.
In his mouth nations spake; his tongue might be
Interpreter to Greece, France, Italy.
His native soil was the four parts o'the earth;
All Europe was too narrow for his birth.
A young apostle; and,—with reverence may
I speak't,—inspired with gift of tongues, as they.
Nature gave him, a child, what men in vain
Oft strive, by art though furthered, to obtain.
His body was an orb, his sublime soul
Did move on virtue's and on learning's pole;
Whose regular motions better to our view,
Than Archimedes' sphere, the heavens did shew.
Graces and virtues, languages and arts,
Beauty and learning, filled up all the parts.
Heaven's gifts, which do like falling stars appear
Scattered in others, all, as in their sphere,
Were fixed, conglobate in his soul, and thence
Shone through his body, with sweet influence;
Letting their glories so on each limb fall,
The whole frame rendered was celestial.
Come, learned Ptolemy, and trial make,
If thou this hero's altitude can'st take:
But that transcends thy skill; thrice happy all,
Could we but prove thus astronomical.
Lived Tycho now, struck with this ray which shone[78]
More bright i'the morn, than others beam at noon,
He'd take his astrolabe, and seek out here
What new star 'twas did gild our hemisphere.
Replenished then with such rare gifts as these,
Where was room left for such a foul disease?
The nation's sin hath drawn that veil, which shrouds
Our day-spring in so sad benighting clouds.
Heaven would no longer trust its pledge, but thus
Recalled it,—rapt its Ganymede from us.
Was there no milder way but the small-pox,
The very filthiness of Pandora's box?
So many spots, like næves on Venus' soil,
One jewel set off with so many a foil;
Blisters with pride swelled, which through's flesh did sprout
Like rose-buds, stuck i'the lily-skin about.
Each little pimple had a tear in it,
To wail the fault its rising did commit;
Which, rebel-like, with its own lord at strife,
Thus made an insurrection 'gainst his life.
Or were these gems sent to adorn his skin,
The cabinet of a richer soul within?
No comet need foretel his change drew on,
Whose corpse might seem a constellation.
O had he died of old, how great a strife
Had been, who from his death should draw their life;
Who should, by one rich draught, become whate'er
Seneca, Cato, Numa, Cæsar, were!
Learned, virtuous, pious, great; and have by this
An universal metempsychosis.
Must all these aged sires in one funeral
Expire? all die in one so young, so small?
Who, had he lived his life out, his great fame
Had swoln 'bove any Greek or Roman name.
But hasty winter, with one blast, hath brought
The hopes of autumn, summer, spring, to nought.
Thus fades the oak i'the sprig, i'the blade the corn;
Thus without young, this Phœnix dies, new-born.
Must then old three-legged grey-beards with their gout,
Catarrhs, rheums, aches, live three ages out?
Time's offals, only fit for the hospital!
Or to hang antiquaries rooms withal!
Must drunkards, lechers, spent with sinning, live
With such helps as broths, possets, physic give?
None live, but such as should die? shall we meet
With none but ghostly fathers in the street?
Grief makes me rail, sorrow will force its way,
And showers of tears tempestuous sighs best lay.
The tongue may fail; but overflowing eyes
Will weep out lasting streams of elegies.
But thou, O virgin-widow, left alone,
Now thy beloved, heaven-ravished spouse is gone,
Whose skilful sire in vain strove to apply
Med'cines, when thy balm was no remedy;
With greater than Platonic love, O wed
His soul, though not his body, to thy bed:
Let that make thee a mother; bring thou forth
The ideas of his virtue, knowledge, worth;
Transcribe the original in new copies; give
Hastings o'the better part: so shall he live
In's nobler half; and the great grandsire be
Of an heroic divine progeny:
An issue which to eternity shall last,
Yet but the irradiations which he cast.
Erect no mausoleums; for his best
Monument is his spouse's marble breast.
TO THE MEMORY OF Mr OLDHAM.
John Oldham, who, from the keenness of his satirical poetry,
justly acquired the title of the English Juvenal, was born at Shipton,
in Gloucestershire, where his father was a clergyman, on 9th
August, 1653. About 1678, he was an usher in the free school
of Croydon; but having already distinguished himself by several
pieces of poetry, and particularly by four severe satirical invectives
against the order of Jesuits, then obnoxious on account of
the Popish Plot, he quitted that mean situation, to become tutor
to the family of Sir Edward Theveland, and afterwards to a son of
Sir William Hickes. Shortly after he seems to have resigned all
employment except the unthrifty trade of poetry. When Oldham
entered upon this career, he settled of course in the metropolis,
where his genius recommended him to the company of the first
wits, and to the friendship of Dryden. He did not long enjoy the
pleasures of such a life, nor did he live to experience the uncertainties,
and disappointment, and reverses, with which, above all
others, it abounds. Being seized with the small-pox, while visiting
at the seat of his patron, William Earl of Kingston, he died of
that disease on the 9th December, 1683, in the 30th year of his
age.
His "Remains," in verse and prose, were soon afterwards published,
with elegies and recommendatory verses prefixed by Tate,
Flatman, Durfey, Gould, Andrews, and others. But the applause
of Dryden, expressed in the following lines, was worth all the
tame panegyrics of other contemporary bards. It appears, among
the others, in "Oldham's Remains," London, 1683.
TO
THE MEMORY
OF
Mr OLDHAM.
F arewell, too little, and too lately known,
Whom I began to think, and call my own:
For sure our souls were near allied, and thine
Cast in the same poetic mould with mine.
One common note on either lyre did strike,
And knaves and fools we both abhorred alike.
To the same goal did both our studies drive;
The last set out, the soonest did arrive.
Thus Nisus fell upon the slippery place,
Whilst his young friend performed and won the race.
O early ripe! to thy abundant store
What could advancing age have added more!
It might (what nature never gives the young)
Have taught the numbers of thy native tongue.
But satire needs not those, and wit will shine
Through the harsh cadence of a rugged line.[79]
A noble error, and but seldom made,
When poets are by too much force betrayed.
}
{ Thy generous fruits, though gathered ere their prime,
{ Still shewed a quickness; and maturing time
{ But mellows what we write, to the dull sweets of rhyme.
Once more, hail, and farewell! farewell, thou young,
But ah too short, Marcellus of our tongue!
Thy brows with ivy, and with laurels bound;
But fate and gloomy night encompass thee around.
TO
THE PIOUS MEMORY
OF
Mrs ANNE KILLIGREW.
Mrs Anne Killigrew was daughter of Dr Henry Killigrew,
master of the Savoy, and one of the prebendaries of Westminster,
and brother of Thomas Killigrew, renowned, in the court
of Charles II., for wit and repartee. The family, says Mr Walpole,
was remarkable for its loyalty, accomplishments, and wit;
and this young lady, who displayed great talents for painting and
poetry, promised to be one of its fairest ornaments. She was
maid of honour to the Duchess of York, and died of the small-pox
in 1685, the 25th year of her age.
Mrs Anne Killigrew's poems were published after her death in
a thin quarto, with a print of the author, from her portrait drawn
by herself. She also painted the portraits of the Duke of York
and of his Duchess, and executed several historical pictures, landscapes,
and pieces of still life. See Lord Orford's Lives of the
Painters, Works, Vol. III. p. 297; and Ballard's Lives of
Learned Ladies.
The poems of this celebrated young lady do not possess any
uncommon merit, nor are her paintings of a high class, although
preferred by Walpole to her poetry. But very slender attainments
in such accomplishments, when united with youth, beauty,
and fashion, naturally receive a much greater share of approbation
from contemporaries, than unbiassed posterity can afford to
them. Even the flinty heart of old Wood seems to have been
melted by this young lady's charms, notwithstanding her being of
womankind, as he contemptuously calls the fair sex. He says,
that she was a Grace for a beauty, and a Muse for a wit; and that
there must have been more true history than compliment in our
author's ode, since otherwise the lady's father would not have permitted
it to go to press.—Athenæ, Vol. II. p. 1036.
This ode, which singularly exhibits the strong grasp and comprehensive
range of Dryden's fancy, as well as the harmony of his
numbers, seems to have been a great favourite of Dr Johnson, who,
in one place, does not hesitate to compare it to the famous ode on
St Cecilia; and, in another, calls it undoubtedly the noblest ode
that our language ever has produced. Although it is probable
that few will subscribe to the judgment of that great critic in the
present instance, yet the verses can never be read with indifference
by any admirer of poetry. We are, it is true, sometimes affronted
by a pun, or chilled by a conceit; but the general power of
thought and expression resumes its sway, in despite of the interruption
given by such instances of bad taste. In its arrangement,
the ode is what the seventeenth century called pindaric; freed,
namely, from the usual rules of order and arrangement. This
license, which led most poets, who exercised it, to extravagance
and absurdity, only gave Dryden a wider scope for the exercise
of his wonderful power of combining and uniting the most dissimilar
ideas, in a manner as ingenious as his numbers are harmonious.
Images and scenes, the richest, though most inconsistent
with each other, are sweeped together by the flood of song: we
neither see whence they arise, nor whither they are going; but
are contented to admire the richness and luxuriance in which the
poet has arrayed them. The opening of the poem has been highly
praised by Dr Johnson. "The first part," says that critic,
"flows with a torrent of enthusiasm,—Fervet immensusque ruit.
All the stanzas, indeed, are not equal. An imperial crown cannot
be one continued diamond; the gems must be held together
by some less valuable matter."
The stanzas, which appear to the editor peculiarly to exhibit
the spirit of the pindaric ode, are the first, second, fourth, and
fifth. Of the others, the third is too metaphysical for the occasion;
the description of the landscapes in the sixth is beautiful,
and presents our imagination with the scenery and groups of
Claude Lorraine; and that of the royal portraits, in the seventh,
has some fine lines and turns of expression: But I cannot admire,
with many critics, the comparison of the progress of genius to the
explosion of a sky-rocket; and still less the flat and familiar conclusion,
What next she had designed, heaven only knows.
The eighth stanza is disgraced by antitheses and conceit; and
though the beginning of the ninth be beautiful and affecting, our
emotion is quelled by the nature of the consolation administered
to a sea captain, that his sister is turned into a star. The last
stanza excites ideas perhaps too solemn for poetry; and what is
worse, they are couched in poetry too fantastic to be solemn;
but the account of the resurrection of the "sacred poets," is, in
the highest degree, elegant and beautiful.
Anne Killigrew was the subject of several other poetical lamentations,
one or two of which are in the Luttrell Collection.
TO
THE PIOUS MEMORY
OF THE ACCOMPLISHED YOUNG LADY
Mrs ANNE KILLIGREW,
EXCELLENT IN
THE TWO SISTER ARTS
OF
POESY AND PAINTING.
AN ODE.
I.
Thou youngest virgin-daughter of the skies,
Made in the last promotion of the blest;
Whose palms, new plucked from paradise,
In spreading branches more sublimely rise,
Rich with immortal green above the rest:
Whether, adopted to some neighbouring star,
Thou roll'st above us, in thy wandering race,
Or, in procession fixed and regular,
Mov'st with the heaven's majestic pace;
Or, called to more superior bliss,
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.
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;
While yet a young probationer,
And candidate of heaven.
II.
If by traduction came thy mind,
Our wonder is the less to find
A soul so charming from a stock so good;
Thy father was transfused into thy blood:
So wert thou born into a tuneful strain,
An early, rich, and inexhausted vein.[80]
But if thy pre-existing soul
Was formed, at first, with myriads more,
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:
}
{ Nor can thy soul a fairer mansion find,
{ Than was the beauteous frame she left behind:
{ Return to fill or mend the choir of thy celestial kind.
III.
May we presume to say, that, at thy birth,
New joy was sprung in heaven, as well as here on earth.
}
{ For sure the milder planets did combine
{ On thy auspicious horoscope to shine,
{ And e'en the most malicious were in trine.
Thy brother-angels at thy birth
Strung each his lyre, and tuned it high,
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 clustering swarm of bees
On thy sweet mouth distilled their golden dew,
'Twas that such vulgar miracles
Heaven had not leisure to renew:
For all thy blest fraternity of love
Solemnized there thy birth, and kept thy holiday above.
IV.
O gracious God! how far have we
Prophaned thy heavenly gift of poesy?
Made prostitute and profligate the muse,
Debased to each obscene and impious use,
Whose harmony was first ordained above
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)
T'increase the streaming ordures of the stage?
What can we say t'excuse our second fall?
Let this thy vestal, heaven, atone for all:
Her Arethusian stream remains unsoiled,
Unmixed with foreign filth, and undefiled;
Her wit was more than man, her innocence a child.[81]
V.
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,
That it seemed borrowed 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;
Each test, and every light, her muse will bear,
Though Epictetus with his lamp were there.
E'en love (for love sometimes her muse exprest)
Was but a lambent flame which played 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.
VI.
Born to the spacious empire of the Nine,
One would have thought she should have been content
To manage well that mighty government;
But what can young ambitious souls confine?
}
{ To the next realm she stretched her sway,
{ For Painture near adjoining lay,
{ A plenteous province, and alluring prey.
A chamber of dependencies was framed,
(As conquerors will never want pretence,
When armed, to justify the offence,)
And the whole fief, in right of poetry, she claimed.
The country open lay without defence;
For poets frequent inroads there had made,
And perfectly could represent
The shape, the face, with every lineament,
And all the large domains which the Dumb Sister swayed;
All bowed beneath her government,
Received in triumph wheresoe'er she went.
Her pencil drew whate'er her soul designed,
And oft the happy draught surpassed the image in her mind.
The sylvan scenes of herds and flocks,
And fruitful plains and barren rocks,
Of shallow brooks that flowed so clear,
The bottom did the top appear;
Of deeper too and ampler floods,
Which, as in mirrors, shewed the woods;
Of lofty trees, with sacred shades,
And perspectives of pleasant glades,
}
{ Where nymphs of brightest form appear,
{ And shaggy satyrs standing near,
{ Which them at once admire and fear.
The ruins too of some majestic piece,
Boasting the power of ancient Rome or Greece,
Whose statues, frizes, columns, broken lie,
And, though defaced, the wonder of the eye;
What nature, art, bold fiction, e'er durst frame,
Her forming hand gave feature to the name.
So strange a concourse ne'er was seen before,
But when the peopled ark the whole creation bore.
VII.
The scene then changed; with bold erected look
Our martial king[82] the sight with reverence strook:
For, not content to express his outward part,
Her hand called out the image of his heart:
}
{ His warlike mind, his soul devoid of fear,
{ His high-designing thoughts were figured there,
{ As when, by magic, ghosts are made appear.
Our phœnix queen[83] was pourtrayed too so bright,
Beauty alone could beauty take so right:
Her dress, her shape, her matchless grace,
Were all observed, as well as heavenly face.
With such a peerless majesty she stands,
As in that day she took the crown from sacred hands:
Before a train of heroines was seen,
In beauty foremost, as in rank, the queen.
Thus nothing to her genius was denied,
But like a ball of fire the further thrown,
Still with a greater blaze she shone,
And her bright soul broke out on every side.
What next she had designed, heaven only knows:
To such immoderate growth her conquest rose,
That fate alone its progress could oppose.
VIII.
Now all those charms, that blooming grace,
The well-proportioned shape, and beauteous face,
Shall never more be seen by mortal eyes;
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;
But, like a hardened felon, took a pride
To work more mischievously slow,
And plundered first, and then destroyed.
O double sacrilege on things divine,
To rob the relic, and deface the shrine!
But thus Orinda died;[84]
Heaven, by the same disease, did both translate;
As equal were their souls, so equal was their fate.
IX.