Orinda

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KATHERINE PHILIPS

1631-1664

To My Excellent Lucasia, on Our Friendship

I did not live until this time

Crowned my felicity,

When I could say without a crime,

I am not thine, but thee.

This carcass breathed, and walked, and slept,

So that the world believed

There was a soul the motions kept;

But they were all deceived.

For as a watch by art is wound

To motion, such was mine:

But never had Orinda found

A soul till she found thine;

Which now inspires, cures and supplies,

And guides my darkened breast:

For thou art all that I can prize,

My joy, my life, my rest.

No bridegroom's nor crown-conqueror's mirth

To mine compared can be:

They have but pieces of the earth,

I've all the world in thee.

Then let our flames still light and shine,

And no false fear control,

As innocent as our design,

Immortal as our soul.

1667

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KATHERINE PHILIPS

1631-1664

To My Excellent Lucasia, on Our Friendship

I did not live until this time

Crowned my felicity,

When I could say without a crime,

I am not thine, but thee.

This carcass breathed, and walked, and slept,

So that the world believed

There was a soul the motions kept;

But they were all deceived.

For as a watch by art is wound

To motion, such was mine:

But never had Orinda found

A soul till she found thine;

Which now inspires, cures and supplies,

And guides my darkened breast:

For thou art all that I can prize,

My joy, my life, my rest.

No bridegroom's nor crown-conqueror's mirth

To mine compared can be:

They have but pieces of the earth,

I've all the world in thee.

Then let our flames still light and shine,

And no false fear control,

As innocent as our design,

Immortal as our soul.

1667

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KATHERINE PHILIPS

1631-1664

Known in her own day as "The Matchless Orinda", Katherine Philips was the daughter of John Fowler, a London merchant. In 1647 she married James Philips, a wealthy Puritan some years her senior, who shared many of her interests and supported her literary career with enthusiasm. At Cardigan Priory, their Welsh home, the pair saw themselves as the center of an intellectual circle called the Society of Friendship, in which each member was given a playfully neoclassical pseudonym. Katherine herself, for instance, became "Orinda" and James became "Antenor", while Katherine's friend Anne Owen, viscountess of Dungannon, was the original of the "Excellent Lucasia" to whom a number of "Orinda's" pieces on friendship are dedicated.

Though few of Philips's poems were published in her lifetime, she did have several translations of Corneille's plays performed to great acclaim, and her verses, circulated privately, received much praise from such contemporary poets and intellectuals as Abraham Cowley, Jeremy Taylor, and John Dryden. The mother of two children, one of whom died in infancy, she clearly had a "room of her own" in which to write and leisure for friendship as well as literary activity. That her most loving poems are addressed to female friends suggests the bonds that were beginning to develop between seventeenth-century intellectual women, who felt that they had found "all the world" in each other rather than in romanticized heroes. Nevertheless, "The Matchless Orinda" was admired by male as well as female readers. When she died of smallpox at the early age of thirty-three, countless tributes appeared, eulogizing her. Though some of her work was conventionally pious or sentimental, her first collection of plays and poems, posthumously printed, was extraordinarily popular; as the poet Anne Killigrew somewhat enviously remarked, "every laurel to her laurel bowed" --that is, every respected poet praised her artistry.

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KATHERINE PHILIPS

1631-1664

To My Excellent Lucasia, on Our Friendship

I did not live until this time

Crowned my felicity,

When I could say without a crime,

I am not thine, but thee.

This carcass breathed, and walked, and slept,

So that the world believed

There was a soul the motions kept;

But they were all deceived.

For as a watch by art is wound

To motion, such was mine:

But never had Orinda found

A soul till she found thine;

Which now inspires, cures and supplies,

And guides my darkened breast:

For thou art all that I can prize,

My joy, my life, my rest.

No bridegroom's nor crown-conqueror's mirth

To mine compared can be:

They have but pieces of the earth,

I've all the world in thee.

Then let our flames still light and shine,

And no false fear control,

As innocent as our design,

Immortal as our soul.

1667

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KATHERINE PHILIPS

1631-1664

Lucasia and Orinda parting with Pastora and Phillis at Ipswich

In your converse we best can read,

How constant we should be;

But, 'tis in losing that, we need

All your philosophy.

How perish'd is the joy that's past,

The present how unsteady!

What comfort can be great, and last,

When this is gone already?

III

Yet that it subtly may torment,

The memory does remain;

For what was, when enjoy'd, Content,

Is, in its absence, Pain.

If you'll restore it, we'll not grieve

That Fate does now us sever;

'Tis better by your gift to live,

Than by our own endeavour.

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KATHERINE PHILIPS

1631-1664

Orinda to Lucasia

Observe the weary birds ere night be done,

How they would fain call up the tardy Sun,

With feathers hung with dew,

And trembling voices too,

They court their glorious planet to appear,

That they may find recruits of spirits there.

The drooping flowers hang their heads,

And languish down into their beds:

While brooks more bold and fierce than they,

Wanting those beams, from whence

All things drink influence,

Openly murmur and demand the day.

Thou, my Lucasia, art far more to me,

Than he to all the under-world can be;

From thee I've heat and light,

Thy absence makes my night.

But ah! my friend, it now grows very long,

The sadness weighty, and the darkness strong:

My tears (its due¹) dwell on my cheeks,

And still my heart thy dawning seeks,

And to thee mournfully it cries,

That if too long I wait,

Ev'n thou mayst come too late,

And not restore my life, but close my eyes.

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KATHERINE PHILIPS

1631-1664

Friendship's Mystery,

To my dearest Lucasia

Come, my Lucasia, since we see

That miracles men's faith do move,

By wonder and by prodigy

To the dull angry world let's prove

There's a religion in our Love.

For though we were disign'd t'agree,

That Fate no liberty destroys,

But our Election is as free

As Angels', who with greedy choice

Are yet determin'd to their joys.

III

Our hearts are doubled by the loss,

Here mixture is addition grown;

We both diffuse, and both ingross:

And we whose minds are so much one,

Never, yet ever are alone.

We court our own captivity

Than thrones more great and innocent:

'Twere banishment to be set free,

Since we fear fetters whose intent

Not bondage is but ornament.

Divided joys are tedious found,

And griefs united easier grow:

We are ourselves but by rebound,

And all our titles shuffled so,

Both Princes, and both subjects too.

Our hearts are mutual victims laid,

While they (such power in Friendship lies)

Are Altars, Priests, and Off'rings made:

And each heart which thus kindly dies,

Grows deathless by the sacrifice.

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KATHERINE PHILIPS

1631-1664

Content,

To my dearest Lucasia

Content, the false World's best disguise,

The search and faction of the wise,

Is so abstruse and hid in night,

That, like that Fairy Red-cross Knight,

Who treacherous Faleshood for clear Truth had got,

Men think they have it when they have it not.

For Courts content would gladly own,

But she ne'er dwelt about a throne:

And to be flatter'd, rich, and great,

Are things which do men's senses cheat.

But grave Experience long since this did see,

Ambition and Content would ne'er agree.

III

Some vainer would Content expect

From what their bright outsides reflect:

But sure Content is more divine

Than to be digg'd from rock or mine:

And they that know her beauties will confess,

She needs no lustre from a glittering dress.

In Mirth some place her, but she scorns

Th' assistance of such crackling thorns,

Nor owes herself to such thin sport,

That is so sharp and yet so short:

And painters tell us they the same strokes place,

To make a laughing and a weeping face.

Others there are that place Content

In liberty from Government:

But whomsoe'er Passions deprave,

Though free from shackles, he's a slave.

Content and Bondage differ only then,

When we are chain'd by vices, not by men.

Some think the camp Content does know,

And that she sits o' th' victor's brow:

But in his laurel there is seen

Often a cypress-brow between.

Nor will Content herself in that place give,

Where Noise and Tumult and Destruction live.

VII

But yet the most discreet believe,

The Schools this jewel do receive,

And thus far's true without dispute,

Knowledge is still the sweetest fruit.

But whilst men seek for Truth they lose their peace;

And who heaps knowledge, sorrow doth increase.

VIII

But now some sullen Hermit smiles,

And thinks he all the world beguiles,

And that his cell and dish contain

What all mankind wish for in vain.

But yet his pleasure's follow'd with a groan,

For man was never born to be alone.

Content herself best comprehends

Betwixt two souls, and they two friends,

Whose either joys in both are fix'd,

And multiplied by being mix'd:

Whose minds and interests are so the same;

Their griefs, when once imparted, lose that name.

These far remov'd from all bold noise,

And (what is worse) all hollow joys,

Who never had a mean design,

Whose flame is serious and divine,

And calm, and even, must contented be,

For they've both Union and Society.

Then, my Lucasia, we who have

Whatever Love can give or crave;

Who can with pitying scorn survey

The trifles which the most betray;

With innocence and perfect friendship fir'd,

By Virtue join'd, and by our choice retir'd.

XII

Whose mirrors are the crystal brooks,

Or else each other's hearts and looks;

Who cannot wish for other things

Than privacy and friendship brings:

Whose thoughts and persons chang'd and mixt are one,

Enjoy Content, or else the World hath none.

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KATHERINE PHILIPS

1631-1664

A retir'd Friendship. To Ardelia

Come, my Ardelia, to this Bower,

Where kindly mingling souls awhile,

Let's innocently spend an hour,

And at all serious follies smile.

Here is no quarrelling for crowns,

Nor fear of changes in our fate;

No trembling at the Great One's frowns,

Nor any slavery of state.

III

Here's no disguise nor treachery,

Nor any deep conceal'd design;

From blood and plots this place is free,

And calm as are those looks of thine.

Here let us sit and bless our stars,

Who did such happy quiet give,

As that remov'd from noise of wars,

In one another's hearts we live.

Why should we entertain a fear?

Love cares not how the World is turn'd:

If crowds of dangers should appear,

Yet Friendship can be unconcern'd.

We wear about us such a charm,

No horror can be our offence;

For mischief's self can do no harm

to Friendship or to Innocence.

VII

Let's mark how soon Apollo's beams

Command the flocks to quit their meat,

And not entreat the neighbouring streams

To quench their thirst, but cool their heat.

VIII

In such a scorching age as this,

Who would not ever seek a shade,

Deserve their happiness to miss,

As having their own peace betray'd.

But we (of one another mind

Assur'd) the boisterous World disdain;

With quiet souls and confin'd

Enjoy what Princes wish in vain.

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KATHERINE PHILIPS

1631-1664