I.

Cruel disease! ah, could it not suffice,
Thy old and constant spite to exercise
Against the gentlest and the fairest sex,
Which still thy depredations most do vex?
Where still thy malice, most of all
(Thy malice or thy lust) does on the fairest fall,
And in them most assault the fairest place,
The throne of empress beauty, ev'n the face.
There was enough of that here to assuage,
(One would have thought) either thy lust or rage;
Was't not enough, when thou, profane disease,
Didst on this glorious temple seize:
Was't not enough, like a wild zealot, there,
All the rich outward ornaments to tear,
Deface the innocent pride of beauteous images?
Was't not enough thus rudely to defile,
But thou must quite destroy the goodly pile?
And thy unbounded sacrilege commit
On th'inward holiest holy of her wit?
Cruel disease! there thou mistook'st thy power;
No mine of death can that devour,
On her embalmed name it will abide
An everlasting pyramide,
As high as heav'n the top, as earth, the basis wide.

II.

All ages past record, all countries now,
In various kinds such equal beauties show,
That ev'n judge Paris would not know
On whom the golden apple to bestow,
Though goddesses to his sentence did submit,
Women and lovers would appeal from it:
Nor durst he say, of all the female race,
This is the sovereign face.
And some (tho' these be of a kind that's rare,
That's much, oh! much less frequent than the fair)
So equally renown'd for virtue are,
That is the mother of the gods might pose,
When the best woman for her guide she chose.
But if Apollo should design
A woman Laureat to make,
Without dispute he would Orinda take,
Though Sappho and the famous nine
Stood by, and did repine.
To be a Princess or a Queen
Is great; but 'tis a greatness always seen;
The world did never but two women know,
Who, one by fraud, th'other by wit did rise
To the two tops of spiritual dignities,
One female pope of old, one female poet now.

III.

Of female poets, who had names of old,
Nothing is shown, but only told,
And all we hear of them perhaps may be
Male-flatt'ry only, and male-poetry.
Few minutes did their beauties light'ning waste,
The thunder of their voice did longer last,
But that too soon was