Though dead, it yet retains some untouched grace,
Wherein we may thy soul's fair footsteps trace,
Which no disease can frighten from its wonted place:
Even its deformities do thee become,
And only serve to consecrate thy doom.
Those marks of death which did its surface stain,
Now hallow, not profane.
Each spot does to a ruby turn;
What soiled but now, would now adorn.
Those asterisks, placed in the margin of thy skin,
Point out the nobler soul that dwelt within:
Thy lesser, like the greater, world appears
All over bright, all over stuck with stars.
So Indian luxury, when it would be trim,
Hangs pearls on every limb.
Thus, amongst ancient Picts, nobility
In blemishes did lie;
Each by his spots more honourable grew,
And from their store a greater value drew:
Their kings were known by the royal stains they bore,
And in their skins their ermine wore.[1]
41
Whose purple seemed the badge of tyrant fate,
- ↑ In this stanza, Oldham appears to have closely imitated Dryden's lines on the death of Lord Hastings. Thus Dryden:—
So many spots, like næves on Venus' soil,
One Jewel set off with so many a foil. . . . .
Or were these gems sent to adorn his skin,
The cabinet of a richer soul within?
No comet need foretel his change drew on,
Whose corpse might seem a constellation.'It is not a little remarkable that this was also Dryden's first poem, written in his seventeenth year, on a similar occasion. Oldham appears to considerable advantage in comparison. His ode is a more elaborate and correct composition, abounding quite as much in conceits, but with this difference, that Dryden's are for the most part forced and preposterous, and huddled together, while Oldham's have a certain kind of dignity and appropriateness, and are usually kept clear of inconsistency and confusion. Dryden's versification suffers equally by contrast. Oldham seems to have taken particular pains with this piece.
