7 One month, three days, and half an hour, Judith held the sovereign power: Wondrous beautiful her face, But so weak and small her wit, That she to govern was unfit, And so Susanna took her place.
8 But when Isabella came, Arm'd with a resistless flame, And the artillery of her eye, Whilst she proudly march'd about, Greater conquests to find out, She beat out Susan by the bye.
9 But in her place I then obey'd Black-eyed Bess, her viceroy made, To whom ensued a vacancy. Thousand worst passions then possess'd The interregnum of my breast. Bless me from such an anarchy!
10 Gentle Henrietta then, And a third Mary, next began: Then Joan, and Jane, and Audria; And then a pretty Thomasine, And then another Catharine, And then a long _et caetera_.
11 But should I now to you relate The strength and riches of their state, The powder, patches, and the pins, The ribands, jewels, and the rings, The lace, the paint, and warlike things, That make up all their magazines:
12 If I should tell the politic arts To take and keep men's hearts, The letters, embassies, and spies, The frowns, the smiles, and flatteries, The quarrels, tears, and perjuries, Numberless, nameless mysteries!
13 And all the little lime-twigs laid By Mach'avel the waiting-maid; I more voluminous should grow (Chiefly if I like them should tell All change of weathers that befell) Than Holinshed or Stow.
14 But I will briefer with them be, Since few of them were long with me. An higher and a nobler strain My present Emperess does claim, Heleonora! first o' the name, Whom God grant long to reign.
In a deep vision's intellectual scene, Beneath a bower for sorrow made, The uncomfortable shade Of the black yew's unlucky green, Mixed with the mourning willow's careful gray, Where rev'rend Cam cuts out his famous way, The melancholy Cowley lay; And, lo! a Muse appeared to his closed sight (The Muses oft in lands of vision play,) Bodied, arrayed, and seen by an internal light: A golden harp with silver strings she bore, A wondrous hieroglyphic robe she wore, In which all colours and all figures were That Nature or that Fancy can create. That Art can never imitate, And with loose pride it wantoned in the air, In such a dress, in such a well-clothed dream, She used of old near fair Ismenus' stream Pindar, her Theban favourite, to meet; A crown was on her head, and wings were on her feet.