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To the Countess of Huntingdon. |
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MADAM, |
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Man to God's Image; Eve, to man was made, |
Nor finde we that God breath'd a soul in her, |
Canons will not, Church functions you invade, |
Nor laws to civil office you prefer. |
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Who vagrant transitory Comets sees, |
Wonders because they are rare; But a new star |
Whose motion with the firmament agrees, |
Is miracle; for, there, no new things are. |
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In women so perchance mild innocence |
A seldom comet is, but active good |
A miracle, which reason scapes, and sense; |
For, Art and Nature this in them withstood. |
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As such a star, the Magi led to view |
The manger-cradled infant, God below. |
By vertues beams (by fame deriv'd from you) |
May apt souls, and the worst may vertue know. |
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If the world's age, and death be argued well |
By the Suns fall, which now towards earth doth bend, |
Then we might fear that vertue, since she fell |
So low as woman, should be near her end. |
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But she's not stoop'd, but rais'd; exil'd by men |
She fled to heaven, that's heavenly things, that's you, |
She was in all men thinly scatter'd then, |
But now a mass contracted in a few.
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[CW: She] |