A Song
1. The young, the fair, the chaste, the good,
The sweet Camilla, in a flood
Of her own Crimson lies
A bloody, bloody sacrifice
To Death and man’s inhumane cruelties.
Weep Virgins till your sorrow swells
In tears above the Ivory Cells
That guard those Globes of light;
Drown, drown those beauties of your eyes.
Beauty should mourn, when beauty dies;
And make a general night,
To pay her innocence its Funeral rite.
2. Death since his Empire first begun, [p. 116.]
So foul a conquest never won,
Nor yet so fair a prize:
And had he had a heart, or eyes,
Her beauties would have charm’d his cruelties.
Even Savage Beasts will Beauty spare,
Chaft Lions fawn upon the fair; [Fierce lions]
Nor dare offend the chaste:
But vitious man, that sees and knows
The mischiefs his wild fury does,
Humours his passions haste,
To prove ungovern’d man the greatest beast.
1. How frailty makes us to our wrong
Fear, and be loth to dye,
When Life is only dying long
And Death the remedy!
We shun eternity,
And still would gravel her beneath, [Scil., grovel]
Though still in woe and strife,
When Life’s the path that leads to Death,
And Death the door to Life.
2. The Fear of Death is the disease [p. 117.]
Makes the poor patient smart;
Vain apprehensions often freeze
The vitals in the heart,
Without the dreaded Dart.
When fury rides on pointed steel
Death’s fear the heart doth seize,
Whilst in that very fear we feel
A greater sting than his.
3. But chaste Camilla’s vertuous fear
Was of a noble kind,
Not of her end approaching near
But to be left behind,
From her dear Love disjoyn’d;
When Death in courtesie decreed,
To make the fair his prize,
And by one cruelty her freed
From humane cruelties.
CHORUS.
Thus heav’n does his will disguise,
To scourge our curiosities,
When too inquisitive we grow
Of what we are forbid to know.
Fond humane nature that will try [p. 118.]
To sound th’ Abiss of Destiny!
Alas! what profit can arise
From those forbidden scrutinies,
When Oracles what they foretel
In such Ænigma’s still conceal,
That self indulging man still makes
Of deepest truths most sad mistakes!
Or could our frailty comprehend
The reach those riddles do intend:
What boots it us when we have done,
To foresee ills we cannot shun?
But ’tis in man a vain pretence,
To know or prophesie events,
Which only execute, and move,
By a dependence from above.
’Tis all imposture to deceive
The foolish and inquisitive,
Since none foresee what shall befal,
But providence that governs all.
Reason wherewith kind Heav’n has blest
His creature man above the rest,
Will teach humanity to know
All that it should aspire unto;
And whatsoever fool relies
On false deceiving prophesies,
Striving by conduct to evade
The harms they threaten, or perswade,
Too frequently himself does run [p. 119.]
Into the danger he would shun,
And pulls upon himself the woe
Fate meant he should much later know.
By such delusions vertue strays
Out of those honourable ways
That lead unto that glorious end,
To which the noble ever bend.
Whereas if vertue were the guide,
Mens minds would then be fortified
With constancy, that would declare
Against supineness, and despair.
We should events with patience wait,
And not despise, nor fear our Fate.
[p. 120.]