She touch'd him with her harp, and rais'd him from the ground;

The shaken strings melodiously resound.

"Art thou return'd at last," said she,
"To this forsaken place and me?
Thou prodigal! who didst so loosely waste
Of all thy youthful years the good estate;
Art thou return'd here, to repent too late,
And gather husks of learning up at last,
Now the rich harvest time of life is past,

And Winter marches on so fast?
But, when I meant t'adopt thee for my son,
And did as learn'd a portion assign,
As ever any of the mighty Nine

Had to their dearest children done;
When I resolv'd t'exalt thy anointed name,
Among the spiritual lords of peaceful fame;
Thou, changeling! thou, bewitch'd with noise and
show,

Would'st into courts and cities from me go;
Would'st see the world abroad, and have a share
In all the follies and the tumults there:
Thou would'st, forsooth, be something in a state,
And business thou would'st find, and would'st
create ;

Business! the frivolous pretence
Of human lusts, to shake off innocence;

Business! the grave impertinence; Business! the thing which I of all things hate; Business! the contradiction of thy fate.

"The Rachel, for which twice seven years and more
Thou didst with faith and labour serve,
And didst (if faith and lab ur can) deserve,
Though she contracted was to thee,
Given to another thou didst see;
Given to another, who had store
Of fairer and of richer wives before,
And not a Leah left, thy recompense to be!
Go on; twice seven years more thy fortune try;
Twice seven years more God in his bounty may
Give thee, to fling away
Into the court's deceitful lottery:

But think how likely 'tis that thou,
With the dull work of thy unwieldy plough,
Should'st in a hard and barren season thrive,

Should'st even able be to live ;' Thou, to whose share so little bread did fall, In that miraculous year, when manna rain'd on

all."

Thus spake the Muse, and spake it with a smile.
That seem'd at once to pity and revile.
And to her thus, raising his thoughtful head,
The melancholy Cowley said-
"Ah, wanton foe! dost thou upbraid
The ills which thou thyself hast made?
When in the cradle innocent I lay,
Thou, wicked spirit! stolest me away,
And my abused soul didst bear
Into thy new-found worlds, I know not where,
Thy golden Indies in the air;
And ever since I strive in vain
My ravish'd freedom to regain;
Still I rebel, still thou dost reign;
Lo! still in verse against thee I complain.
There is a sort of stubborn weeds,

Which, if the earth but once, it ever, breeds;
No wholesome herb can near them thrive,
No useful plant can keep alive:
The foolish sports I did on thee bestow,
Make all my art and labour fruitless now;
Where once such fairies dance, no grass doth ever
grow.

"When my new mind had no infusion known, Thou gav'st so deep a tincture of thine own, That ever since I vainly try

To wash away th' inherent dye: Long work perhaps may spoil thy colours quite, But never will reduce the native white:

Thou slack'nest all my nerves of industry,

By making them so oft to be

The tinkling strings of thy lose minstrelsy.
Whoever this world's happiness would see,
Must as entirely cast off thee,

As they who only Heaven desire
Do from the world retire.

This was my errour, this my gross mistake,
Myself a demi-votary to make.

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:
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 the princes, thou
Should'st 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 wher, 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 'tis 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 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, prophane 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 comm t
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 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.

That's much, ah, much less frequent than the And some (though these be of a kind that's rare,

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 'tis 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;
'Tis, by the number of the sharers, drown'd.

Orinda, on the female coasts of Fame, Engrosses all the goods of a poetic 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 dip'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!

And skill in painting, dost bestow, Upon thy ancient arms, the gaudy heavenly

bow.

'Tis, I believe, this archery to show,

That so much cost in colours thou,

Swift as light thoughts their empty career run,
Thy race is finish'd when begun ;
Let a post-angel start with thee,

And thou the goal of Earth shalt reach as soon as he.

Thou in the Moon's bright chariot, proud and gay,
Dost thy bright wood of stars survey;
And all the year dost with thee bring

Of thousand flowery lights thine own nocturnal spring.

Thou, Scythian-like, dost round thy lands above
The Sun's gilt tents for ever move,
And still, as thou in pomp dost go,
The shining pageants of the world attend thy
show.

Nor amidst all these triumphs dost thou scor The humble glow-worms to adorn, And with those living spangles gild (O greatness without pride!) the bushes of the field.