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So the first part ends on a God Save the King, and
with the second the poet recalls the newly wed couple. He pays a
compliment to the bridegroom's good looks and indirectly to his old
flame, Madam Elizabeth Dixwell:
"How sweet Basil couldst thou well be other
Descending from so fair and wise a Mother?"
The bride is a more inspiring theme; to her he re-dedicates the lines
which his own wife Katherine's charms had once suggested:
"Some say so faire was Hero, Venus' Nun,
As Nature wept, thinking she was undone
Because she took more from her then she left
And of such wondrous Beauty her bereft."
There are pretty touches in the description of Dorothy's every feature:
"Her cheeks spread with a coulor of such hew
So lovely as Aurora never knew,
In which those jars are all composed seen
Which 'twixt the white Rose and the red have been .......
.......... Her Nose, her Chin and her well-hearing Ears
Such whiteness as her lovely forehead wears,
Her hands so pure, so innocent, nay such
They are that Angels may bow down to touch ....... "1 |
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The third section is devoted to an eulogy on
Dorothy's virtue, which would not have displeased the elder Dorothy
Osborne, her aunt:
"Divinitie's the object of her will,
She loves what's good, and hateth what is ill; .........
Angelical's her gesture, and her gate,
Most lovely sweet, humbly conjoyn'd with state.
Pure Vertue is her Hand-maid, and her dress
The richest Jewels of all godliness .......... "
The poem ends with a clumsy conceit on the names of bride and
bridegroom:
"Basil and Dorothy, both names so high
As in them all may read Divinity,
What is a King and gift from God conjoyn'd
But Basilean Dorothy intwined?"
Henry's poem on the Restoration, "Carolus Triumphans", and his
prose work "In praise of the Sacrament", cannot now be traced.2
1 Ibid., p. 16.
2 cf. O. and P. Letters, p. 257. |