Classic Poem

To My Lady Morton, On New-Year's Day, At The Louvre in Paris

Madam! new years may well expect to find
Welcome from you, to whom they are so kind;
Still as they pass, they court and smile on you,
And make your beauty, as themselves, seem new.
To the fair Villiers we Dalkeith prefer,
And fairest Morton now as much to her;
So like the sun's advance your titles show,
Which as he rises does the warmer grow.

But thus to style you fair, your sex's praise,
Gives you but myrtle, who may challenge bays;
From armed foes to bring a royal prize,
Shows your brave heart victorious as your eyes.
If Judith, marching with the gen'ral's head,
Can give us passion when her story's read,
What may the living do, which brought away,
Though a less bloody, yet a nobler prey;
Who from our flaming Troy, with a bold hand,
Snatch'd her fair charge, the Princess, like a brand?
A brand! preserved to warm some prince's heart,
And make whole kingdoms take her brother's part.
So Venus, from prevailing Greeks, did shroud
The hope of Rome, and saved him in a cloud.

This gallant act may cancel all our rage,
Begin a better, and absolve this age.
Dark shades become the portrait of our time;
Here weeps Misfortune, and there triumphs Crime!
Let him that draws it hide the rest in night;
This portion only may endure the light,
Where the kind nymph, changing her faultless shape,
Becomes unhandsome, handsomely to 'scape,
When through the guards, the river, and the sea,
Faith, beauty, wit, and courage, made their way.
As the brave eagle does with sorrow see
The forest wasted, and that lofty tree
Which holds her nest about to be o'erthrown,
Before the feathers of her young are grown,
She will not leave them, nor she cannot stay,
But bears them boldly on her wings away;
So fled the dame, and o'er the ocean bore
Her princely burthen to the Gallic shore.
Born in the storms of war, this royal fair,
Produced like lightning in tempestuous air,
Though now she flies her native isle (less kind,
Less safe for her than either sea or wind!)
Shall, when the blossom of her beauty's blown,
See her great brother on the British throne;
Where peace shall smile, and no dispute arise,
But which rules most, his sceptre, or her eyes.English