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 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!
But thus Orinda died:

155

160

Heaven, by the same disease, did both translate; As equal were their souls, so equal was their fate.

IX.

Meantime her warlike brother on the seas

165

His waving streamers to the winds displays, And vows for his return with vain devotion pays. Ah, generous youth, that wish forbear,

170

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! No more shalt thou behold thy sister's face,

V. 162. But thus Orinda died] The matchless Orinda, Mrs. Katherine Philips, was author of a book of poems published in folio, and wrote several other things. She died also of the small pox in 1664, being only thirty-two years of age. She was a woman of an indifferent appearance; but of great virtue, taste, and erudition, which endeared her to the first The Duke of Ormond, the Earls of Orrery and Roscommon, Lady Corke, &c. Mr. Dryden, Mr. Cowley, &c. &c. were all her friends.

people of the age.

D.

Thou hast already had her last embrace,
But look aloft, and if thou kenn'st from far
Among the Pleiads a new kindled star,
If any sparkles than the rest more bright ;
'Tis she that shines in that propitious light.

X.

175

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;
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,

180

185

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 in-born vigour, on the wing, Like mountain larks, to the new morning sing. There thou, sweet saint, before the quire shall go, As harbinger of heaven, the way to show,

The way which thou so well hast learnt below. 195

UPON THE DEATH OF THE EARL OF
DUNDEE.

Üн last and best of Scots! who didst maintain
Thy country's freedom from a foreign reign;
New people fill the land now thou art gone,
New gods the temples, and new kings the throne.
Scotland and thee did each in other live;
Nor wouldst thou her, nor could she thee survive.
Farewell, who dying didst support the state,
And couldst not fall but with thy country's fate.

5

V. 1. Oh last and best] The conduct and death of this truly valiant chieftain is described with much eloquence and animation in his account of the important battle at Killikranky, by Sir John Dalrymple, in the first volume of his Memoirs. Dundee, being wounded by a musket-ball, rode off the field, desiring his mischance to be concealed, and fainting, dropped from his horse; as soon as he was recovered; he desired to be raised, looked to the field, and asked, 'How things went?' Being told, 'All well;' then said he, 'I am well,' and ex pired. Dr. J. W.

298

ELEONORA ;

A PANEGYRICAL POEM DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF THE LATE COUNTESS OF ABINGDON.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE EARL

MY LORD,

OF ABINGDON, &c.

THE commands with which you honoured me some months ago are now performed: they had been sooner; but betwixt ill health, some business, and many troubles, I was forced to defer them till this time. Ovid, going to his banishment, and writing from on shipboard to his friends, excused the faults of his poetry by his misfortunes; and told them, that good verses never flow but from a serene and composed spirit. Wit, which is a kind of Mercury, with wings fastened to his head and heels, can fly but slowly in a damp air. I therefore chose rather to obey you late than ill: if at least I am capable of writing any thing, at any time, which is worthy your perusal and your patronage. I cannot say that I have escaped from a shipwreck; but have only gained a rock by hard swimming; where I may pant awhile and gather breath; for the doctors give me a sad assurance, that my disease never took its leave of any man, but with a purpose to return. However, my lord, I have laid hold on the interval, and managed the small stock, which age has left me, to the best advantage, in performing this inconsiderable service to my lady's memory. We, who are priests of Apollo, have not the inspiration when we please; but must wait till the god comes rushing on us, and invades us with a fury, which we are not able to resist: which gives us double strength while the fit

continues, and leaves us languishing and spent, at its departure. Let me not seem to boast, my lord, for I have really felt it on this occasion, and prophesied beyond my natural power. Let me add, and hope to be believed, that the excellency of the subject contributed much to the happiness of the execution; and that the weight of thirty years was taken off me, while I was writing. I swam with the tide, and the water under me was buoyant. The reader will easily observe, that I was transported by the multitude and variety of my similitudes; which are generally the product of a luxuriant fancy, and the wantonness of wit. Had I called in my judgment to my assistance, I had certainly retrenched many of them. But I defend them not; let them pass for beautiful faults amongst the better sort of critics: for the whole poem, though written in that which they call Heroic verse, is of the Pindaric nature, as well in the thought as the expression; and, as such, requires the same grains of allowance for it. It was intended, as your lordship sees in the title, not for an elegy, but a panegyric: a kind of apotheosis, indeed, if a heathen word may be applied to a Christian use. And on all occasions of praise, if we take the ancients for our patterns, we are bound by prescription to employ the magnificence of words, and the force of figures, to adorn the sublimity of thoughts. Isocrates amongst the Grecian orators, and Cicero, and the younger Pliny, amongst the Romans, have left us their precedents for our security: for I think I need not mention the inimitable Pindar, who stretches on these pinions out of sight, and is carried upward, as it were, into another world.

This, at least, my lord, I may justly plead, that, if I have not performed so well as I think I have, yet I have used my best endeavours to excel myself. One disadvantage I have had; which is, never to have known or seen my lady; and to draw the lineaments of her mind, from the description which I have received from others, is for a painter to set himself at work without the living original before him: which, the more beautiful it is, will be so much the more difficult for him to conceive, when he has only a relation given him of such and such features by an acquaintance or a friend, without the nice touches, which give the best resembance, and make the graces of the