O gracious God! how far have we Profan'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 were we hurried down This lubrique and adulterate age (Nay, added fat pollutions of our own), To increase the streaming ordures of the stage? What can we say to excuse our second fall? Let this thy Vestal, Heaven, atone for all! Her Arethusian stream remains unsoil'd, Unmixt with foreign filth, and undefil'd; Her wit was more than man, her innocence a child. Art 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. Even 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.... 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 died: Heaven, by the same disease, did both translate; As equal were their souls, so equal was their fate. 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 kenn'st from far, Among the Pleiads a new kindl'd star, If any sparkles than the rest more bright, 'Tis she that shines in that propitious light.