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SOME VERSES ON PRESENTING A BOOK TO COSMELIA.[1]
GO, humble gift, go to that matchless saint,
Of whom thou only wast a copy meant:
And all that's read in thee, more richly find
Comprised in the fair "volume of her mind;
That living system, where are fully writ
All those high morals, which in books we meet:[2]
Easy, as in soft air, there writ they are,
Yet firm, as if in brass they graven were.
Nor is her talent lazily to know,
As dull divines, and holy canters do;
She acts what they only in pulpits prate,
And theory to practice does translate:
Not her own actions more obey her will,
Than that obeys strict virtue's dictates still:
Yet does not virtue from her duty flow,
But she is good, because she will be so:
Her virtue scorns at a low pitch to fly,
'Tis all free choice, nought of necessity:[3]
By such soft rules are saints above confined.
Such is the tie, which them to good does bind.
- ↑ These verses were written in September, 1676; and the three pieces immediately following these have reference, probably, to the same person, and to the same period. They are the only 'love verses' in the collection. The Parting seems to apply to Oldham's departure for Croydon, which took place a short time before; and in the lines complaining of absence, he directly alludes to the drudgeries in which he is engaged, and which leave him few opportunities of seeing the lady. Oldham's strength did not lie in pathos of tenderness; yet there is much feeling and delicacy in these little pieces, and a purity of sentiment very rare in the poetical love-making of the period.
- ↑ In this passage, and one or two others, Oldham appropriated, as equally applicable to the lady, certain images he had already addressed in the preceding (at that time unpublished) poem to the memory of his friend Morwent. Thus, in the Ode.—
'Thou wast a living system where were wrote
All those high morals which in books are sought.' - ↑ Thine a far nobler pitch did fly,
'Twas all free choice, nought of necessity.—Ode.
