110
COWLEY'S POEMS.
ODE.
UPON DR. HARVEY.
Coy Nature (which remain'd, though aged grown,
A beauteous virgin still, enjoy'd by none,
Nor seen unveil'd by any one),
When Harvey's violent passion she did see,
Began to tremble and to flee;
Took sanctuary, like Daphne, in a tree:
There Daphne's lover stopp'd, and thought it much
The very leaves of her to touch:
But Harvey, our Apollo, stopp'd not so;
Into the bark and root he after her did go!
No smallest fibres of a plant,
For which the eye-beams' point doth sharpness want,
His passage after her withstood.
What should she do? Through all the moving wood
Of lives endow'd with sense she took her flight;
Harvey pursues, and keeps her still in sight.
But, as the deer, long-hunted, takes a flood,
She leap'd at last into the winding streams of blood;
Of man's meander all the purple reaches made,
Till at the heart she stay'd;
Where turning head, and at a bay,
Thus by well-purged ears was she o'erheard to say:
A beauteous virgin still, enjoy'd by none,
Nor seen unveil'd by any one),
When Harvey's violent passion she did see,
Began to tremble and to flee;
Took sanctuary, like Daphne, in a tree:
There Daphne's lover stopp'd, and thought it much
The very leaves of her to touch:
But Harvey, our Apollo, stopp'd not so;
Into the bark and root he after her did go!
No smallest fibres of a plant,
For which the eye-beams' point doth sharpness want,
His passage after her withstood.
What should she do? Through all the moving wood
Of lives endow'd with sense she took her flight;
Harvey pursues, and keeps her still in sight.
But, as the deer, long-hunted, takes a flood,
She leap'd at last into the winding streams of blood;
Of man's meander all the purple reaches made,
Till at the heart she stay'd;
Where turning head, and at a bay,
Thus by well-purged ears was she o'erheard to say:
"Here sure shall I be safe" (said she),
"None will be able sure to see
"None will be able sure to see
