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EARL OF DORSET ARTEMISIA - Alexander Pope, The Complete Poetical Works of Alexander Pope [1903]

Edition used:

The Complete Poetical Works of Alexander Pope. Cambridge Edition, ed. Henry W. Boynton (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1903).

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EARL OF DORSET

ARTEMISIA

    • Tho’ Artemisia talks by fits
    • Of councils, classics, fathers, wits,
    • Reads Malbranche, Boyle, and Locke,
    • Yet in some things methinks she fails:
    • ’T were well if she would pare her nails,
    • And wear a cleaner smock.
    • Haughty and huge as High Dutch bride,
    • Such nastiness and so much pride
    • Are oddly join’d by fate:
    • On her large squab you find her spread,
    • Like a fat corpse upon a bed,
    • That lies and stinks in state.
    • She wears no colours (sign of grace)
    • On any part except her face;
    • All white and black beside:
    • Dauntless her look, her gesture proud,
    • Her voice theatrically loud,
    • And masculine her stride.
    • So have I seen, in black and white,
    • A prating thing, a magpie hight,
    • Majestically stalk;
    • A stately worthless animal,
    • That plies the tongue, and wags the tail,
    • All flutter, pride, and talk.

PHRYNE

    • Phryne had talents for mankind;
    • Open she was and unconfin’d,
    • Like some free port of trade:
    • Merchants unloaded here their freight,
    • And agents from each foreign state
    • Here first their entry made.
    • Her learning and good breeding such,
    • Whether th’ Italian or the Dutch,
    • Spaniards or French, came to her,
    • To all obliging she’d appear;
    • ’T was Si Signior, ’t was Yaw Mynheer,
    • ’T was S’il vous plait, Monsieur.
    • Obscure by birth, renown’d by crimes,
    • Still changing names, religions, climes,
    • At length she turns a bride:
    • In diamonds, pearls, and rich brocades,
    • She shines the first of batter’d jades,
    • And flutters in her pride.
    • So have I known those insects fair
    • (Which curious Germans hold so rare)
    • Still vary shapes and dyes;
    • Still gain new titles with new forms;
    • First grubs obscene, then wriggling worms,
    • Then painted butterflies.