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 distill'd their golden dew,
"Twas that such vulgar miracles
Heaven had not leisure to renew:

For all thy blest fraternity of love

Solemniz'd there thy birth, and kept thy holy-day above.

IV.

O gracious God! how far have we
Prophan'd thy heavenly gift of poesy?
Made prostitute and profligate the Muse,
Debas'd to each obscene and impious use,
Whose harmony was first ordain'd above
For tongues of angels, and for hymns of love?
O wretched we! why where we hurry'd down
This lubrique and adulterate age,

(Nay added fat pollutions of our own)
Tincrease 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 unsoil'd
Unmix'd with foreiga filth, and undefil'd;

Her wit was more than man, her innocence a child.

V.

And 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 seem'd borrow'd, 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.

Ev'n love (for love sometimes her Muse exprest)

Was but a lambent flame which play'd 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 stretch'd her sway,
For Painture near adjoining lay,
A plenteous province, and alluring prey.

A Chambre of Dependencies was fram'd. (As conquerors will never want pretence, When arm'd, to justify th' offence)

And the whole fief, in right of Poetry, she claim'd.
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 sway'd.

All bow'd beneath her government,

Receiv'd in triumph wheresoe'er she went.

Her pencil drew, whate'er her soul design'd,

And oft the happy draught surpass'd the image in her mind.
The sylvan scenes of herds and locks,
And fruitful plains and barren rocks,
Of shallow brooks that flow'd so clear,
The bottom did the top appear;
Of deeper too and ampler floods,
Which, as in mirrors, shew'd, the woods;
Of lofty trees, with sacred shades,"
And perspectives of pleasant glades,
Where nymphs of brightest from 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, freezes, columns, broken lie,
And, though defac'd, 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 chang'd, with bold erected look Our martial king the sight with reverence strook: his outward part,

express

For,
not content t'
Her hand call'd out the image of his heart:
His warlike mind, his soul devoid of fear,
His high-designing thoughts were figur'd there,
As when, by magic, ghosts are made appear.

}

Our phoenix queen was pourtray'd too so bright,

Beauty alone could beauty take so right:
Her dress, her shape, her matchless grace,
Were all observ'd, 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 deny'd,
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 design'd, 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-proportion'd 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 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 dy'd:

}

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

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,
Thou hast already had her last embrace.
But look aloft, and if thou ken'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.

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.

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 mounting larks, to the new morning siug.
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.

2) ALEXANDER'S FEAST; OR THE POWER OF MUSIC *).

An Ode in honour of St. Cecilias' Day **).

I.

'Twas at the royal feast, for Persia won

By Philip's warlike son:

Aloft in awful state

The godlike hero sate

On his imperial throne:

His valiant peers were plac'd around; Their brows with roses and with myrtles bound. (So should desert in arms be crown'd:)

The lovely Thais, by his side

Sate like a blooming Eastern bride

In flower of youth and beauty's pride:
Happy, happy, happy pair!

None but the brave,

None but the brave,

None but the brave deserves the fair.

Chorus.

Happy, happy, happy pair!

None but the brave,

None but the brave,

None but the brave deserves the fair.

II.

Timotheus ***), plac'd on high

Amid the tuneful quire,

With flying fingers touch'd the lyre:

*) Die hier mitgetheilte Ode von Dryden wurde von unserm berühmten Landsmann Georg Friedrich Händel (geb. zu Halle 1684, gest. 1754) im Jahre 1756 in Musik gesetzt. Schöne Nachbildungen derselben haben Weifse und Ramler geliefert. (Man sehe Weifsen's kleine lyrische Gedichte, Theil III. S. 159 und Ramber's Werke, Ausg. von 1801, Theil II. S. 45.) Die hier befindlichen Anmerkungen sind von dem zu letzt genannten Dichter entlehnt. **) Cäcilia, die im Anfang des 3ten Jahrhunderts lebte, wird für eine heilige Jungfrau und für die Erfinderin der Orgel gehalten. Sie soll nebst dem Valerianus, ihrem Verlobten, den sie zum christlichen Glauben bekehrt hatte, den Märtyrertod erlitten haben. Ihr Andenken wird in London jährlich den 22sten November gefeiert.

***) Timotheus, der vortreffliche Tonkünstler in Griechen