To British damsels beauty's palm is due,
Aliens! to follow them is fame for you.
Oh city,10 founded by Dardanian hands,
Whose towering front the circling realm commands,
Too blest abode! no loveliness we see
In all the earth, but it abounds in thee.
The virgin multitude that daily meets, 80
Radiant with gold and beauty, in thy streets,
Outnumbers all her train of starry fires
With which Diana gilds thy lofty spires.
Fame says, that wafted hither by her doves,
With all her host of quiver-bearing Loves,
Venus, prefering Paphian scenes no more,
Has fix'd her empire on thy nobler shore.
But lest the sightless boy inforce my stay,
I leave these happy walls, while yet I may.
Immortal Moly11 shall secure my heart 90
From all the sorc'ry of Circaean art,
And I will e'en repass Cam's reedy pools
To face once more the warfare of the Schools.
Meantime accept this trifle; Rhymes, though few,
Yet such as prove thy friend's remembrance true.

1 Diodati was a schoolfellow of Milton at St. Paul's, of Italian
extraction, nephew of Giovanni Diodati, the translator of the
Bible into Italian, and son of Theodore Diodati, a physician of
eminence, who married and settled in England. charles Diodati's
early death formed the subject of The "Epitaphium Damonis" ("The
Death of Damon").