1Look up, sad eyes, behold the smiling morn,
2How she
her golden tresses
doth adorn 3With sparkling gems and roses redolent
, 4And gillyflowers
whose aromatic scent 5Perfumes the world; look but up and see!
6Trust me, her beauty will enamor thee.
7She is so sweet, so young, so heavenly fair,
8With blushing cheeks, clear eyes, and curling hair.
9View that fair breast which, in her prime of youth,
10Gave nourishment unto eternal Truth
. 11O, that I once could see that lovely sight:
12Astraea, naked in the arms of Light
! 13But O, I ne’er can see it, till above
14I am involved
in endless joy and love. 15View, then, those robes which doth her limbs enfold,
16Rich purple, fringed with never-wasting
gold. 17Pale Cynthie
doth her sickly
beauty shroud, 18And for a veil she
wears a sable cloud; 19And all the other glitt’ring globes of light
20Contract their beams and trundle
out of sight. 21Had I lived on the multiplicity
22Of heathen gods, my chief felicity
23Would surely be rich temples to adorn
24Unto the rising luster of the morn:
25Juno, Bellona, and the Queen of Love,
26And she whose daughter turned into a dove,
27Old Berecynthia
and her numerous brood, 28Cruel Diana
, pleased with virgin’s blood, 29With wand’ring Ceres
: all these would I slight, 30And victims offer unto none but Light.
31Blue Doris
and her floating frothy train, 32Leucothea
that in stately Thebes did reign, 33Isis, the cow, the goddess, and the maid,
34Even all that on the wavy empire
swayed
; 35Nor should she
Olympic Jupiter
invoke
36Because her altars did no oft’ner smoke;
37For I, with incense, would so cloud the skies
38That should
obscure the luster of her eyes.