Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, COMMANDED TO WRITE VERSES, by WILLIAM HAMMOND


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

COMMANDED TO WRITE VERSES, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Since your command inspires
Last Line: A guardian angel be to me.
Subject(s): Poetry & Poets


MADAM,
SINCE your command inspires
My willing heart with lyric fires,
Though my composure owe its birth,
Or to cold water, or dull earth,
Wanting the active qualities
That spritely fire and air comprise;
Yet guided by that influence,
I may with those defects dispense;
And raptures no less winning vent
Than the fam'd Thracian instrument;
What, though old sullen Saturn lie
Brooding on my nativity;
So your bright eyes the clouds dispell,
Which on my drooping fancy dwell!
But stay, what glass have we so bright,
To do your matchless beauty right?
Nature but from her own disgrace
Can add no lustre to that face;
Not from her patterns can we find
A form to represent your mind.
The figures which this world invest
Are images, in which exprest
Some truer essences appear,
Which not to sight subjected are.
So you, fair Celia, inwardly
Dissemble well the Deity,
And counterfeit in flesh and skin
The fineness of a Cherubin:
But, fair one, if you must put on
The order's Institution,
Admitted to this Hierarchy,
A guardian angel be to me.





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