A Dryden poem in Bath Abbey

Monument to Mary Frampton (1676 - 1698) in Bath Abbey.

I've seen the exterior of Bath Abbey a thousand times, but never went inside it until a couple of days ago.  I was mostly interested in the wall monuments, and I was delighted to find one of my favourite poets in action: a John Dryden commission for the memorial to Mary Frampton, who was just 22 when she died. 

The poem was later published as "On the Monument of a Fair Maiden Lady, who Died at Bath, and is there Interred". Here's the text from Vol 11 of Scott's edition:

Below this marble monument is laid

All that heaven wants of this celestial maid.

Preserve, O sacred tomb, thy trust consigned;

The mold was made on purpose for the mind:

And she would lose, if, at the latter day,

One atom could be mixed of other clay;

Such were the features of her heavenly face,

Her limbs were formed with such harmonious grace:

So faultless was the frame, as if the whole

Had been an emanation of the soul;

Which her own inward symmetry revealed,

And like a picture shone, in glass annealed;

Or like the sun eclipsed, with shaded light;

Too piercing, else, to be sustained by sight.

Each thought was visible that rolled within;

As through a crystal case the figured hours are seen.

And heaven did this transparent veil provide,

Because she had no guilty thought to hide.

All white, a virgin-saint, she sought the skies,

For marriage, though it sullies not, it dyes.

High though her wit, yet humble was her mind;)

As if she could not, or she would not find            )

How much her worth transcended all her kind.)

Yet she had learned so much of heaven below,

That when arrived, she scarce had more to know;

But only to refresh the former hint,

And read her Maker in a fairer print.

So pious, as she had no time to spare

For human thoughts, but was confined to prayer;

Yet in such charities she passed the day,

'Twas wondrous how she found an hour to pray.

A soul so calm, it knew not ebbs or flows,

Which passion could but curl, not discompose.

A female softness, with a manly mind;         )

A daughter duteous, and a sister kind;         )

In sickness patient, and in death resigned.  )

A fantastic poem I think, showing that Dryden near the end of his writing life remained as switched-on as ever; this smooth concoction that takes in the resurrection of the body, the technology of clocks and eclipses, and the ruffled surface of still water (which I think is what "curl" refers to here).

It's both a reverent poem and a secular, witty poem; which is to say, I suppose, that like all Dryden's poetry it's proposing a better society -- could any program be more serious? 

It isn't satirical at all, though in the lines about prayer you can recognize the same kind of playfulness that in a different context might be devastating about a pious hypocrite. I think Dryden assumes that God has a sense of humour too. Heaven, he says, can have little to teach such a fine gal. 

And dying in her physical perfection (before childbirths) allows Dryden to muse on the intimate connection between the body's harmony and the soul's harmony; that wouldn't be so effortless if his subject had been more time-worn. You could call it frivolous, but I think Dryden would say that images are God-given and are for use.