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To the Countess of Huntingdon.
MADAM,
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.

[CW: She]