Selina, Countess of Huntingdon

Your special witness, as I recollect,
Was, in your fervour, elegance; you yearned
For Grace, but only gracefully, and earned,
By sheer good taste, the title of 'elect'.

So perfectly well-bred that in your hands
All pieties were lavender, that scent
Lingered about your college, where you spent
Your fragrance on the burly ordinands.

In your communion, virtue was uncouth;
But now that rigour lost its cutting edge,
As charm in you drove its schismatic wedge
Between your church's beauty and its truth.