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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=419837" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Ode</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">To the Pious Memory of the Accomplished Young Lady, Mrs Anne Killigrew,<br>Excellent in the Two Sister-arts of Poesy and Painting.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Thou youngest Virgin Daughter of the skies,<br>Made in the last promotion of the blest;<br>Whose palms, new-plucked from Paradise,<br>In spreading branches more sublimely rise,<br>Rich with immortal green, above the rest:<br>Whether, adopted to some neighbouring star,<br>Thou roll'st above us in thy wand'ring race,<br>Or, in procession fixed and regular<br>Moved with the heavens' majestic pace;<br>Or, called to more superior bliss,<br>Thou tread'st with seraphims the vast abyss:<br>Whatever happy region be thy place,<br>Cease thy celestial song a little space;<br>(Thou wilt have time enough for hymns divine,<br>Since Heaven's eternal year is thine.)<br>Hear then a mortal muse thy praise rehearse<br>In no ignoble verse;<br>But such as thy own voice did practise here,<br>When thy first fruits of poesie were given,<br>To make thyself a welcome inmate there;<br>While yet a young probationer<br>And candidate of Heaven.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">If by traduction came thy mind,<br>Our wonder is the less to find<br>A soul so charming from a stock so good;<br>Thy father was transfused into thy blood:<br>So wert thou born into the tuneful strain,<br>(An early, rich, and inexhausted vein.)<br>But if thy pre-existing soul<br>Was formed, at first, with myriads more,<br>It did through all the mighty poets roll<br>Who Greek or Latin laurels wore,<br>And was that Sappho last, which once it was before;<br>If so, then cease thy flight, O Heav'n-born mind!<br>Thou hast no dross to purge from thy rich ore:<br>Nor can thy soul a fairer mansion find<br>Than was the beauteous frame she left behind:<br>Return, to fill or mend the choir of thy celestial kind.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">May we presume to say that at thy birth<br>New joy was sprung in Heav'n as well as here on earth?<br>For sure the milder planets did combine<br>On thy auspicious horoscope to shine,<br>And ev'n the most malicious were in trine.<br>Thy brother-angels at thy birth<br>Strung each his lyre, and tuned it high,<br>That all the people of the sky<br>Might know a poetess was born on earth;<br>And then if ever, mortal ears<br>Had heard the music of the spheres!<br>And if no clust'ring swarm of bees<br>On thy sweet mouth distilled their golden dew,<br>'Twas that such vulgar miracles<br>Heav'n had not leisure to renew:<br>For all the blest fraternity of love<br>Solemnized there thy birth, and kept thy holyday above.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O gracious God! how far have we<br>Profaned thy Heav'nly gift of poesy!<br>Made prostitute and profligate the Muse,<br>Debased to each obscene and impious use,<br>Whose harmony was first ordained above,<br>For tongues of angels and for hymns of love!<br>Oh wretched we! why were we hurried down<br>This lubrique and adult'rate age<br>(Nay, added fat pollutions of our own)<br>T' increase the steaming ordures of the stage?<br>What can we say t' excuse our second fall?<br>Let this thy vestal, Heav'n, atone for all:<br>Her Arethusian stream remains unsoiled,<br>Unmixed with foreign filth and undefiled;<br>Her wit was more than man, her innocence a child.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Art she had none, yet wanted none,<br>For nature did that want supply:<br>So rich in treasures of her own,<br>She might our boasted stores defy:<br>Such noble vigour did her verse adorn,<br>That it seemed borrowed, where 'twas only born.<br>Her morals too were in her bosom bred<br>By great examples daily fed,<br>What in the best of books, her father's life, she read.<br>And to be read herself she need not fear;<br>Each test and ev'ry light her muse will bear,<br>Though Epictetus with his lamp were there.<br>Ev'n love (for love sometimes her muse expressed)<br>Was but a lambent-flame which played about her breast,<br>Light as the vapours of a morning dream;<br>So cold herself, while she such warmth expressed,<br>'Twas Cupid bathing in Diana's stream.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Born to the spacious empire of the Nine,<br>One would have thought she should have been content<br>To manage well that mighty government;<br>But what can young ambitious souls confine?<br>To the next realm she stretched her sway,<br>For painture near adjoining lay,<br>A plenteous province, and alluring prey.<br>A chamber of dependences was framed,<br>(As conquerers will never want pretence,<br>When armed, to justify th' offence),<br>And the whole fief, in right of poetry, she claimed.<br>The country open lay without defence;<br>For poets frequent inroads there had made,<br>And perfectly could represent<br>The shape, the face, with ev'ry lineament;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And all the large domains which the dumb-sister swayed,<br>All bowed beneath her government,<br>Received in triumph wheresoe'er she went.<br>Her pencil drew whate'er her soul designed,<br>And oft the happy draught surpassed the image in her mind.<br>The sylvan scenes of herds and flocks,<br>And fruitful plains and barren rocks;<br>Of shallow brooks that flowed so clear,<br>The bottom did the top appear;<br>Of deeper too and ampler floods<br>Which as in mirrors showed the woods;<br>Of lofty trees, with sacred shades,<br>And perspectives of pleasant glades,<br>Where nymphs of brightest form appear,<br>And shaggy satyrs standing near,<br>Which them at once admire and fear.<br>The ruins too of some majestic piece,<br>Boasting the pow'r of ancient Rome or Greece,<br>Whose statues, friezes, columns, broken lie,<br>And, though defaced, the wonder of the eye;<br>What nature, art, bold fiction, e'er durst frame,<br>Her forming hand gave feature to the name.<br>So strange a concourse ne'er was seen before,<br>But when the peopled ark the whole creation bore.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The scene then changed; with bold erected look<br>Our martial king the sight with rev'rence strook:<br>For, not content t' express his outward part,<br>Her hand called out the image of his heart,<br>His warlike mind, his soul devoid of fear,<br>His high-designing thoughts were figured there,<br>As when, by magic, ghosts are made appear.<br>Our phoenix Queen was portrayed too so bright,<br>Beauty alone could beauty take so right:<br>Her dress, her shape, her matchless grace,<br>Were all observed, as well as heavenly face.<br>With such a peerless majesty she stands,<br>As in that day she took the crown from sacred hands:<br>Before a train of heroines was seen,<br>In beauty foremost, as in rank, the Queen!<br>Thus nothing to her genius was denied,<br>But like a ball of fire, the farther thrown,<br>Still with a greater blaze she shone,<br>And her bright soul broke out on ev'ry side.<br>What next she had designed, Heaven only knows:<br>To such immod'rate growth her conquest rose,<br>That Fate alone its progress could oppose.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Now all those charms, that blooming grace,<br>That well-proportioned shape, and beauteous face,<br>Shall never more be seen by mortal eyes;<br>In earth the much-lamented virgin lies!<br>Not wit nor piety could Fate prevent;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Nor was the cruel destiny content<br>To finish all the murder at a blow,<br>To sweep at once her life and beauty too;<br>But, like a hardened felon, took a pride<br>To work more mischievously slow,<br>And plundered first, and then destroyed.<br>O double sacrilege on things divine,<br>To rob the relic, and deface the shrine!<br>But thus Orinda died:<br>Heaven, by the same disease, did both translate;<br>As equal were their souls, so equal was their fate.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Meantime, her warlike brother on the seas<br>His waving streamers to the winds displays,<br>And vows for his return, with vain devotion, pays.<br>Ah, gen'rous youth! that wish forbear,<br>The winds too soon will waft thee here!<br>Slack all thy sails, and fear to come,<br>Alas, thou know'st not, thou art wrecked at home!<br>No more shalt thou behold thy sister's face,<br>Thou hast already had her last embrace.<br>But look aloft, and if thou kenn'st from far<br>Among the Pleiads a new-kindled star,<br>If any sparkles than the rest more bright,<br>'Tis she that shines in that propitious light.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">When in mid-air the golden trump shall sound,<br>To raise the nations underground;<br>When in the valley of Jehosaphat<br>The judging God shall close the book of Fate;<br>And there the last assizes keep<br>For those who wake and those who sleep;<br>When rattling bones together fly<br>From the four corners of the sky,<br>When sinews o'er the skeletons are spread,<br>Those clothed with flesh, and life inspires the dead;<br>The sacred poets first shall hear the sound,<br>And foremost from the tomb shall bound:<br>For they are covered with the lightest ground;<br>And straight with in-born vigour, on the wing,<br>Like mounting larks, to the New Morning sing.<br>There thou, sweet saint, before the choir shall go,<br>As harbinger of Heav'n, the way to show,<br>The way which thou so well hast learned below.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=John+Dryden">John Dryden</a><div class=q>
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Excellent in the Two Sister-arts of Poesy and Painting.

Thou youngest Virgin Daughter of the skies,
Made in the last promotion of the blest;
Whose palms, new-plucked from Par..."></div>
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