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| NEXT heaven, my vows to thee, O sacred Muse! | |
| I offered up, nor didst thou them refuse. | |
| O Queen of verse, said I, if thou’lt inspire, | |
| And warm my soul with thy poetic fire, | |
| No love of gold shall share with thee my heart, | 5 |
| Or yet ambition in my breast have part, | |
| More rich, more noble I will ever hold | |
| The Muse’s laurel than a crown of gold. | |
| An undivided sacrifice I’ll lay | |
| Upon thine altar, soul and body pay; | 10 |
| Thou shalt my pleasure, my employment be, | |
| My all I’ll make a holocaust to thee. | |
| The deity that ever does attend | |
| Prayers so sincere, to mine did condescend. | |
| I writ, and the judicious prais’d my pen: | 15 |
| Could any doubt ensuing glory then? | |
| What pleasing raptures fill’d my ravish’d sense, | |
| How strong, how sweet, Fame, was thy influence! | |
| And thine, false hope, that to my flatter’d sight | |
| Didst glories represent so near and bright! | 20 |
| By thee deceiv’d, methought each verdant tree | |
| Apollo’s transform’d Daphne seemed to be; | |
| And every fresher branch, and every bough | |
| Appear’d as garlands to empale my brow. | |
| The learn’d in love say, thus the winged boy | 25 |
| Does first approach, drest up in welcome joy; | |
| At first he to the cheated lover’s sight | |
| Nought represents but rapture and delight, | |
| Alluring hopes, soft fears, which stronger bind | |
| Their hearts, than when they more assurance find. | 30 |
| Embolden’d thus, to fame I did commit | |
| (By some few hands) my most unlucky wit. | |
| But ah, the sad effects that from it came! | |
| What ought t’ have brought me honour, brought me shame! | |
| Like Aesop’s painted jay, I seem’d to all, | 35 |
| Adorn’d in plumes, I not my own could call: | |
| Rifled like her, each one my feathers tore, | |
| And, as they thought, unto the owner bore. | |
| My laurels thus another’s brow adorn’d, | |
| My numbers they admir’d but me they scorn’d: | 40 |
| Another’s brow that had so rich a store | |
| Of sacred wreaths that circled it before; | |
| Where mine quite lost (like a small stream that ran | |
| Into a vast, and boundless ocean) | |
| Was swallow’d up with what it join’d, and drown’d, | 45 |
| And that abyss yet no accession found. | |
| Orinda (Albion’s and her sex’s grace) | |
| Ow’d not her glory to a beauteous face; | |
| It was her radiant soul that shone within, | |
| Which struck a lustre thro’ her outward skin; | 50 |
| That did her lips and cheeks with roses dye, | |
| Advanc’d her height and sparkled in her eye. | |
| Nor did her sex at all obstruct her fame, | |
| But higher ’mong the stars it fix’d her name; | |
| What she did write, not only all allow’d, | 55 |
| But every laurel to her laurel bow’d! | |
| The envious age, only to me alone, | |
| Will not allow what I do write my own; | |
| But let them rage and ’gainst a maid conspire, | |
| So deathless numbers from my tuneful lyre | 60 |
| Do ever flow; so, Phoebus, I by thee | |
| Inspir’d divinely, and possest may be; | |
| I willingly accept Cassandra’s fate, | |
| To speak the truth, altho’ believ’d too late. | |
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