The Temple of Death, Art of Poetry, Duel of the Stags, etc (1695)/To Orinda



TO

ORINDA:

An Imitation of

HORACE.

By the Earl of Roscommon.

Integer vitæ, &c.
Carm. Lib. 1. Od. 22.

I.
Virtue (dear Friend) needs no defence,
No Arms, but its own Innocence;
Quivers, and Bows, and poison'd Darts,
Are only us'd by guilty Hearts.

II.
An honest mind, safely, alone
May travel through the burning Zone,
Or through the deepest Scythian Snows,
Or where the fam'd Hydaspes flows.

III.
While (rul'd by a resistless fire)
Our Great ORINDA I Admire.
The hungry Wolves that see me stray
Unarm'd and single, run away.

IV.
Set me in the remotest place
That ever Neptune did embrace,
When there her Image fills my Breast,
Helicon is not half so blest.

V.
Leave me upon some Libyan Plain,
So she my Fancy entertain,
And when the thirsty Monsters meet,
They'll all pay homage to my Feet.

VI.
The Magick of ORINDA's Name,
Not only can their fierceness tame,
But, if that mighty word I once rehearse,
They seem submissively to roar in Verse.