E allow'd you beauty, and we did fubmit
To all the tyrannies of it;
Ah! cruel sex, will you depose' us too in wit?
Orinda * does in that too reign;
Does man behind her in proud triumph draw,
And cancel great Apollo's Salic law.
We our old title plead in vain,
Man may be head, but woman 's now the brain.
Verse was Love's fire-arms heretofore,
In Beauty's camp it was not known;
Too many arms besides that conqueror bore :
'Twas the great cannon we brought down
T' affault a stubborn town;
Orinda first did a bold sally make,
Our ftrongest quarter take,
And so successful prov'd, that the
Turn'd upon Love himself his own artillery.
Women, as if the body were their whole,
Did that, and not the foul,
Transmit to their posterity;
If in it sometime they conceiv'd,
Th' abortive issue never liv'd.
Twere shame and pity', Orinda, if in thee
* Mrs. Catharine Philips.
A fpirit so rich, so noble, and so high,
Should unmanur'd or barren lie.
But thou industriously hast sow'd and till'd
The fair and fruitful field;
And 'tis a strange increase that it does yield.
As, when the happy Gods above
Meet all together at a feast,
A fecret joy unspeakable does move
In their great mother Cybele's contented breast:
With no less pleasure thou, methinks, should see,
This, thy no less immortal progeny.
And in their birth thou no one touch dost find,
Of th' ancient curse to woman-kind :
Thou bring'st not forth with pain;
It neither travail is nor labour of the brain :
So easily they from thee come,
And there is so much room
In th' unexhausted and unfathom'd womb, That, like the Holland Countess, thou may'st bear A child for every day of all the fertile year.
Thou doft my wonder, wouldst my envy, raise,
If to be prais'd I lov'd more than to praise :
Where'er I fee an excellence,
I must admire to see thy well-knit sense,
Thy numbers gentle, and thy fancies high;
Those as thy forehead smooth, these sparkling as thine
'Tis solid, and 'tis manly all,
Or rather 'tis angelical;
For,
For, as in angels, we
Do in thy verses see
Both improv'd sexes eminently meet;
They are than man more strong, and more than woman
They talk of Nine, I know not who,
Female chimera's, that o'er poets reign;
I ne'er could find that fancy true,
But have invok'd them oft, I 'm fure, in vain ::
They talk of Sappho; but, alas! the shame!
Ill-manners foil the lustre of her fame ;
Orinda's inward virtue is so bright,
That, like a lantern's fair inclosed light,
It through the paper shines where she does write..
Honour and friendship, and the generous scorn:
Of things for which we were not born
(Things that can only by a fond disease,
Like that of girls, our vicious stomachs please)
Are the instructive subjects of her pen;
And, as the Roman victory
Taught our rude land arts and civility,
At once she overcomes, enslaves, and betters, men..
But Rome with all her arts could ne'er infpire,
A female breast with fuch a fire:
The warlike Amazonian train,
Who in Elysium now do peaceful reign,
And Wit's mild empire before arms prefer,
Hope 'twill be fettled in their fex by her.
Merlin the seer (and sure he would not lye,
In fuch a facred company)
Does prophecies of learn'd Orinda show,
Which he had darkly spoke so long ago;
Ev'n Boadicia's angry ghost
Forgets her own misfortune and difgrace,
And to her injur'd daughters now does boast,.
That Rome 's o'ercome at last, by a woman of her race.
UPON OCCASION OF A COPY OF VERSES OF MY LORD BROGHILL'S.
E gone (faid I) ingrateful Muse! and see
What others thou canst fool, as well as me.
Since I grew man, and wifer ought to be,
My business and my hopes I left for thee:
For thee (which was more hardly given away).
I left, even when a boy, my play.
But fay, ingrateful mistress! say,
What for all this, what didst thou ever pay?
Thou 'lt say, perhaps, that riches are
Not of the growth of lands where thou dost trade,
And I as well my country might upbraid
Because I have no vineyard there.
Well: but in love thou dost pretend to reign;
There thine the power and lordship is;
Thou bad'st me write, and write, and write again;
'Twas such a way as could not mifs.
I, like a fool, did thee obey :
I wrote, and wrote, but still I wrote in vain;
For, after all my expence of wit and pain,
A rich, unwriting hand, carried the prize away.
Thus I complain'd, and strait the Muse reply'd,
That she had given me fame.
Bounty immenfe ! and that too must be try'd
When I myself am nothing but a name.
Who now, what reader does not strive
T' invalidate the gift whilst we 're alive ?
For, when a poet now himself doth show,
As if he were a common foe,
All draw upon him, all around,
And every part of him they wound,
Happy the man that gives the deepest blow :
And this is all, kind Muse! to thee we owe.
Then in rage I took,
And out at window threw,
Ovid and Horace, all the chiming crew;
Homer himself went with them too;
Hardly escap'd the facred Mantuan book :
I my own offspring, like Agave, tore,
And I resolv'd, nay, and I think I swore,
That I no more the ground would till and sow,
Where only flowery weeds instead of corn did grow.
When (fee the fubtle ways which Fate does find,
Rebellious man to bind!
Just to the work for which he is affign'd).
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