The text comes from Philips’s Poems by the Most Deservedly Admired Mrs. Katherine Philips, the Matchless Orinda (1667). I’ve emended hear in the first line to read heat.
| Although the most do with officious heat | ||
| Only adore the Living and the Great; | ||
| Yet this Queen’s Merits Fame so far hath spread, | ||
| That she rules still, though dispossest and dead. | ||
| 5 | For losing one, two other Crowns remain’d; | |
| Over all hearts and her own griefs she reign’d. | ||
| Two Thrones so splendid, as to none are less | ||
| But to that third which she does now possess. | ||
| Her Heart and Birth Fortune so well did know, | ||
| 10 | That seeking her own fame in such a Foe, | |
| She drest the spacious Theatre for the sight, | ||
| And the admiring World call’d to the sight: | ||
| An Army then of mighty Sorrows brought, | ||
| Who all against this single Vertue sought; | ||
| 15 | And sometimes stratagems,° and sometimes blows | tricks or schemes |
| To her Heroick Soul they did oppose: | ||
| But at her feet their vain attempts did fall, | ||
| And she discover’d and subdu’d them all. | ||
| Till Fortune weary of her malice grew, | ||
| 20 | Became her Captive and her Trophee too: | |
| And by too late a Tribute begg’d t’ have been | ||
| Admitted subject to so brave a Queen. | ||
| But as some Hero who a field hath wone, | ||
| Viewing the things he had so greatly done; | ||
| 25 | When by his spirit’s flight he finds that he | |
| With his own Life must buy his Victory, | ||
| He makes the slaughter’d heap that next him lies | ||
| His Funeral Pile, and then in triumph dies: | ||
| So fell this Royal Dame, with conquering spent, | ||
| 30 | And left in every breast her monument; | |
| Wherein so high an Epitaph is writ, | ||
| As I must never dare to copy it. | ||
| But that bright Angel which did on her wait, | ||
| In fifty years contention with her fate, | ||
| 35 | And in that office did with wonder see | |
| How great her troubles, how much greater she; | ||
| How she maintain’d her best Prerogative, | ||
| In keeping still the power to Forgive: | ||
| How high she did in her Devotion go, | ||
| 40 | And how her Condescention stoop’d as low; | |
| With how much Glory she had ever been | ||
| A Daughter, Sister, Mother, Wife, and Queen; | ||
| Will sure employ some deathless Muse to tell | ||
| Our children this instructive Miracle, | ||
| 45 | Who may her sad Illustrious Life recite, | |
| And after all her Wrongs may do her right. |