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Whom the old Roman wall so ill confin'd, With a new chain of garrisons you bind : Here foreign gold no more shall make them come; Our English iron holds them fast at home. They, that henceforth must be content to know, No warmer region than their hills of snow, May blame the sun; but must extol your Grace, Which in our senate hath allow'd them place. Preferr'd by conquest, happily o'erthrown, Falling they rise, to be with us made one : So kind dictators made, when they came home, Their vanquish'd foes free citizens of Rome. Like favor find the Irish, with like fate, Advanc'd to be a portion of our state; While by your valor, and your bounteous mind, Nations divided by the sea are join'd. Holland, to gain your friendship, is content To be our out-guard on the Continent : She from her fellow-provinces would go, Rather than hazard to have you her foe. In our late fight, when cannons did diffuse, Preventing posts, the terror and the news, Our neighbour-princes trembled at their roar; But our conjunction makes them tremble more. Your never-failing sword make war to cease; And now you heal us with the acts of peace, Our minds with bounty and with awe engage, Invite affection, and restrain our rage. Less pleasure take brave minds in battles won, Than in restoring such as are undone : Tigers have courage, and the rugged bear; But man alone can whom he conquers spare. To pardon willing, and to punish loth, You strike with one hand, but you heal with both: Lifting up all that prostrate lie, you grieve You cannot make the dead again to live. When fate or error had our age misled, And o'er this nation such confusion spread; The only cure which could from heaven come down,

Was so much pow'r and piety in one!

One, whose extraction from an antient line Gives hope again that well-born men may shine: The meanest, in your nature mild and good; The noble rest secured in your blood.

Chang'd like the world's great scene! when with

out noise

The rising sun night's vulgar lights destroys.

Had
you, some ages past, this race of glory
Run, with amazement we should read your story;
But living virtue, all achievements past,
Meets envy still to grapple with at last.
This Cæsar found; and that ungrateful age,
With losing him, went back to blood and rage:
Mistaken Brutus thought to break their yoke,
But cut the bond of union with that stroke.
That sun once set, a thousand meaner stars
Gave a dim light to violence and wars;
To such a tempest as now threatens all,
Did not your nighty arm prevent the fall.
If Rome's great senate could not wieldthat sword,
Which of the conquer'd world had made them

lord,
[new,
What hope had ours, while yet their pow'r was
To rule victorious armies, but by you?
You, that had taught them to subdue their foes,
Could order teach, and their high spirits compose:
To ev'ry duty could their minds engage,
Provoke their courage, and command their rage.
So, when a lion shakes his dreadful mane,
And angry grows, if he that first took pain
To tame his youth, approach the haughty beast,
He bends to him, but frights away the rest.
As the vex'd world, to find repose, at last
Itself into Augustus' arins did cast;
So England now does, with like toil opprest,
Her weary head upon your bosom rest.
Then let the Muses with such notes as thiese
Instruct us what belongs unto our peace!
Your battles they hereafter shall indite,
And draw the image of our Mars in fight;
Tell of towns storm'd, of armies over-run,
And mighty kingdoms by your conduct won :
How, while you thunder'd, clouds of dust did
choke

Contending troops, and seas lay hid in smoke.
Illustrious acts high raptures do infuse,
And ev'ry conqueror creates a Muse:
Here in low strains your inilder deeds we sing :
But there, my Lord! we'll bays and olives bring
To crown your head; while you in triumph ride
O'er vanquish'd nations, and the sea beside;
While all your neighbour-princes unto yon,
Like Joseph's sheaves, pay reverence and bow.

Oft have we wonder'd, how you hid in peace
A mind proportion'd to such things as these;
How such a ruling sp'rit you could restrain,
And practise first over yourself to reign.
Your private life did a just pattern give,
How fathers, husbands, pious sons, should live;
Born to command, your princely virtues slept,
$ 24. Cooper's Hill. Denham.
Like humble David's, while the flock he kept.
SURE there are poets which did never dream
But when your trouble! country call'd you forth,Of Helicon; we therefore may suppose
Upeu Parnassus, nor did take the stream
Your flaming courage and your matchless worth, Those made not poets, but the poets those.
Dazzling the eyes of all that did pretend, Audas courts make notkings, but kings the court,
To fierce contention gave a prosp'rous end. So where the Muses and their train resort,
Sull as you rise, the state, exalted ton,
Parnassus stands; if I can be to thee
Lind. Rù distemper while de chang`d by yon. A poet, thou Parnassus art to me.
】་

Nor

Nor wonder, if (advantag'd in my flight
By taking wing from thy auspicious height)
Through untrac'd ways and airy paths I fly,
More boundless in my fancy than my eye:
My eye,which swift as thought contracts the space
That lies between, and first salutes the place.
Crown'd with that sacred pile, so vast, so high,
That whether 'tis a part of earth or sky
Uncertain seems, and may be thought a proud
Aspiring mountain, or descending cloud, [flight
Paul's, the late theme of such a Muse whose
Has bravely reach'd and soar'd above thy height:
Now shalt thou stand, tho' sword, or time, or fire;
Or zeal more fierce than they, thy fall conspire;
Secure whilst thee the best of poets sings,
Preserv'd from ruin by the best of kings.
Under his proud survey the city lies,
And, like a mist bencath a hill, doth rise;
Whose state and wealth, the business and the
Seem at this distance but a darker cloud; [crowd,
And is, to him who rightly things esteems,
No other in effect than what it seems:
Where, with like haste, tho' several ways they run
Some to undo, and some to be undone ;
While luxury and wealth, like war and peace,
Are each the other's ruin and increase;
As rivers lost in seas some secret vein
Thence reconveys, there to be lost again.
Oh happiness of sweet retir'd content!
To be at once secure and innocent.
Windsor the next(where Mars with Venus dwells,
Beauty with strength) above the valley swells
Into my eye, and doth itself present
With such an easy and unforc'd ascent,
That no stupendous precipice denies
Access, no horror turns away our eyes;
But such a rise as doth at once invite
A pleasure and a rev'rence from the sight.
Thy mighty master's emblem, in whose face
Sat meekness, heighten'd with majestic grace;
Such seems thy gentle height, made only proud
To be the basis of that
pompous load.
Than which a nobler weight no mountain bears,
But Atlas only which supports their spheres.
When Nature shand thisground did thus advance,
'Twas guided by a wiser Pow'r than Chance ;
Mark'd out for such an use, as if 'twere meant
Tinvite the builder, and his choice prevent.
Nor can we call it choice, when what we choose
Folly or blindness only could refuse.

A crown of such majestic towr's doth grace
The god's great mother, when her heav'nly race
Do homage to her; yet she cannot boast,
Among that num'rous and celestial host,
More heroes than can Windsor; nor doth Fame's
Immortal book record more noble names.
Not to look back so far, to whom this isle
Owes the first glory of so brave a pile,
Whether to Cæsar, Albanact, or Brute,
The British Arthur, or the Danish Cnute,
(Tho' this of old no less contest did move,
Than when for llomer's birth seven cities strove;)

• Mr. Waller.

It

(Like him in birth, thou shouldst be like in fame,
As thine his fate, if mine had been his flame)
But whosoe'er it was, Nature design'd
First a brave place, and then as brave a mind.
Not to recount those sev'ral kings, to whom
gave a a cradle, or to whom a tomb;
But thee, great Edward, and thy greater son †,
(The lilies which his father wore he won),
And thy Bellona 1, who the consort came
Not only to thy bed, but to thy fame.
She to thy triumph led one captive king §,
Andbroughtthat son whichdid the second bring §.
Then didst thou found that order (whether love
Or victory thy royal thoughts did move,
Each was a noble cause, and nothing less
Than the design has been the great success),
Which foreign kings and emperors esteem
The second honor to their diadem.
Had thy great destiny but given thee skill
To know, as well as pow'r to act, her will;
That from those kings, who then thy captives
In after-times should spring a royal pair, [were,
Who should possess all that thy mighty pow'r,
Or thy desires more mighty, did devour;
To whom their better fate reserves whate'er
The victor hopes for, or the vanquish'd fear;
That blood which thou and thy great grandsire
And all that since these sister nations bled,[shed,
Had been unspilt, had happy Edward known
That all the blood he spilt had been his own.
When he that patron chose, in whom are join'd
Soldier and martyr, and his arms confin'd
Within the azure circle, he did seem
But to foretel and prophecy of him
Who to his realms that azure round hath join'd,
Which Nature for their bound at first design'd;
That bound to which the world's extremest ends,
Endless itself, its liquid arms extends.
Nordoth he need those emblems which we paint,
But is himself the soldier and the saint.
Here should my wonder dwell, and here mypraise,
Bat my fix'd thoughts my wand'ring eye betrays,
Viewing a neighb'ring hill, whose top of late
A chapel crown'd, till in the common fate
Th' adjoining abbey fell (may no such storm
Fall on our times, where ruin must reform!)
Tell me, my Muse, what monstrous dire offence,
What crime, could any Christian king incense
To such a rage? Was 't luxury, or lust?
Was he so temperate, so chaste, so just ?[more:
Were these their crimes? They were his own much
But wealth is crime enough to him that's poor;
Who, having spent the treasure of his crown,
Condemns their luxury to feed his own.
And yet this act to varnish o'er the shame
Of sacrilege, must bear Devotion's name,
No crime so bold but would be understood
A real, or at least a seeming, good :

Who fears not to do ill, yet fears the name,
And, free from conscience, is a slave to fame:
Thus he the church at once protects and spoils:
But princes' swords are sharper than their styles.
Aud

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And thus to th' ages past he makes amends,
Their charity destroys, their faith defends.
Then did religion in a lazy cell.
In empty airy contemplations dwell;
And, like the block, unmoved lay: but ours,
As much too active, like the stork devours.
Is there no temperate region can be known
Betwixt their frigid and our torrid zone?
Could we not wake from that lethargic dream,
But to be restless in a worse extreme?
And for that lethargy was there no cure,
But to be cast into a calenture?
Can knowledge have no bound, but must advance
So far, to make us wish for ignorance;
And rather in the dark to grope our way,
Than led by a false guide to err by day?
Who sees these disinal heaps, but would demand
What barbarous invader sack'd the land?
But when he hears, no Goth, no Turk did bring
This desolation, but a Christian king;
When nothing but the name of zeal appears
Twixt our best actions and the worst of theirs;
What does he think our sacrilege would spare,
When such th' effects of our devotions are?
Parting from thence 'twixt anger, shame, andfear,
Those for what's past, and this for what's too near,
My eve, descending from the hill, surveys
Where Thames among the wanton valleys strays.
Thames, the most lov'd of all the Ocean's sons
By his old sire, to his embraces runs;
Hasting to pay his tribute to the sea,
Like mortal life to meet eternity.
Tho' with those streams he no resemblance hold,
Whose foam is amber, and their gravel gold,
His genuine and less guilty wealth t' explore,.
Search not his bottom, but survey his shore,
O'er which he kindly spreads his spacious wing,
And hatches plenty for the ensuing spring ;
Nor then destroys it with too fond a stay,
Like mothers who their infants overlay;
Nor with a sudden and impetuous wave,
Like profuse kings, resumes the wealth he gave.
No unexpected inundations spoil
The mower's hopes, or mock the plowman's toil:
But godlike his unwearied bounty flows;
First loves to do, then loves the good he does:
Nor are his blessings to his banks confin'd,
But free and common, as the sea or wind;
When he, to boast or to disperse his stores,
Full of the tributes of his grateful shores,
Visits the world, and in his flying tow'rs
Brings home to us, and makes both Indies ours;
Finds wealth where 'tis, bestows it where it wants;
Cities in deserts, woods in cities, plants.
So that to us no thing, no place is strange,
While his fair bosom is the world's exchange.
O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream
My great example, as it is my theme!

Thy nobler streams shall visit Jove's abodes,
To shine among the stars*, and bathe the gods.
Here nature, whether more intent to please
Us for herself, with strange varieties,
(For things of wonder give no less delight
To the wise Maker's than beholder's sight:
Tho' these delights from sev'ral causes move;
For so our children, thus our friends we love,).
Wisely she knew, the harmony of things,
As well as that of sounds, from discord springs.
Such was the discord which did first disperse
Form, order, beauty, through the universe;
While dryness moisture, coldness heat resists,
All that we have, and that we are, subsists.
While the steep horrid roughness of the wood
Strives with the gentle calmness of the flood.
Such huge extremes when nature doth unite,
Wonder from thence results, from thence delight.
The stream is so transparent, pure and clear,
That had the self-enamour'd youth gaz'd here,
So fatally deceiv'd he had not been,
While he the bottom, not his face, had seen.
But his proud head the airy mountain hides
Among the clouds; his shoulders and his sides
A shady mantle clothes; his curled brows
Frown on the gentle stream, which calmly flows;
While winds and storms his lofty forehead beat,
The common fate of all that 's high or great.
Low at his foot a spacious plain is plac'd,
Between the mountain and the stream embrac'd;
Which shade and shelter from the hill derives,
While the kind river wealth and beauty gives;
And in the mixture of all these appears
Variety, which all the rest endears.
This scene had some bold Greek or British bard
Beheld of old, what stories have we heard
Of fairies, satyrs, and the nymphs their dames,
Their feasts, their revels, and their am'rous flames!
'Tis still the same, although their airy shape
All but a quick poetic sight escape.
There Fannus and Sylvanus keep their courts,
And thither all the horned-host resorts
To graze the ranker mead, that noble herd,
On whose sublime and shady fronts is rear'd
Nature's great master-piece; to show how soon
Great things are made, but sooner are undone.
Here have I seen the King, when great affairs
Gave leave to slacken and unbend his cares,
Attended to the chace by all the flow'r
Of youth, whose hopes a noble prey devour:
Pleasure with praise, and danger they would buy,
And wish a foe that would not only fly.
The stag, now conscious of his fatal growth,
At once indulgent to his fear and sloth,
To some dark covert his retreat had made,
Where nor man's eyes nor heaven's should invade
His soft repose; when th' unexpected sound
Of dogs, and men, his wakeful ear does wound:
Rous'd with the noise, he scarce believes his ear,
Willing to think th' illusions of his fear
Had given this false alarm, but straight his view
Confirms, that more than all his fears are true.
T2
The Forest.

Tho deep, yet clear; tho' gentle, yet not dull;
Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full.
Heaven her Eridanus no more shall boast,
Whose fame in thine, like lesser current, 's lost,

Betray'd

Bray'd in all his strengths, the wood beset;
All instruments, all arts of ruin met;

He calls to mind his strength, and then his speed,
His winged heels, and then his armed head;
With these t'avoid, with that his fate to ineet:
But fear prevails, and bids him trost his feet.
So fast he flies, that his reviewing eve

Has lost the chasers, and his car the cry;
Exulting, 'till he finds their nobler sense
Their disproportion'd speed doth recompense;
Then curses his conspiring feet, whose scent
Betrays that safety which their swiftness lent.
Then tries his friends; among the baser herd,
Where he so lately was obey'd and fear'd,
His safety seeks; the herd, unkindly wise,
Or chaces him from thence, or from him flies;
Like a declining statesman, left forlorn
To his friends' pity, and pursuers' scorn,
With shame remembers, while himself was one
Of the same herd, himself the same had done.
Thence to the coverts and the conscious groves,
The scene of his past triumphs and his loves ;
Sadly surveying where he rang'd alone
Prince of the soil, and all the herd his own;
And, like a bold knight errant, did proclaim
Combat to all, and bore away the dame;
And taught the woods to echo to the stream
His dreadful challenge and his clashing beam.
"Yet faintly now declines the fatal strife,

So much his love was dearer than his life.
Now ev'ry leaf and ev'ry moving breath
Presents a foe, and ev'ry foe a death.
Wearied, forsaken, and pursued, at last
All safety in despair of safety plac'd,
Courage he thence resumes, resolv'd to bear
All their assaults, since 'tis in vain to fear.
And now, too late, he wishes for the fight
That strength he wasted in ignoble flight:
But when he sees the eager ehace renew'd,
Himself by dogs, the dogs by men pursued,
He straight revokes his bold resolve, and more
Repents his courage than his fear before;
Finds that uncertain ways unsafest are,
And doubt a greater mischief than despair.
Then to the stream, when neitherfriendsnorforce,
Nor speed, nor art avail, he shapes his course;
Thinks not their rage so desp'rate to essay
An element more merciless than they.
But fearless they pursue, nor can the flood
Quench their dire thirst; alas, they thirst forblood:
So towards a ship the oar-finn'd gallies ply,
Which wanting sea to ride, or wind to fly,
Stands but to fall reveng'd on those that dare
Tenpt the last fury of extreme despair.
So fares the stag anong th' enraged hounds,
Repels their force,andwoundsreturnsforwounds.
And as a hero, whom his baser foes
In troops surround, now these assails, now those;
Through prodigal of life, disdains to die
By common hands; but if he can descry
Some nobler foc approach, to him he calls,
And begs his fate, and then contented falls:

So when the king a mortal shaft lets flv
From his unerring hand, then glad to die,
Proud of the wound, to it resigns his blood,
And stains the crystal with a purple flood.
This a more innocent and happy chace,
Than when of old, but in the self-same place,
Fair Liberty pursued *, and meant a prey
To lawless pow'r, here turn'd and stood at bay.
When in that remedy all hope was plac'd
Which was, or should have been at least, the last,
Here was that charter seal'd, wherein the crown
All marks of arbitrary pow'r lays down:
Tyrant and slave, those names of hate and fear,
The happier style of king and subject bear:
Happy, when both to the same centre move,
When kings give liberty, and subjects love.
Therefore not long in force this charter stood;
Wanting that seal, it must be seal'd in blood.
The subjects arm'd, the more their princes gave,
Th' advantage only took the more to crave;
Till kings by giving give themselves away,
And ev'n that pow'r that should deny betray."
"Who gives constrain'd,but his own fear reviles;
"Not thank'd, but scorn'd; nor are they gifts,
but spoils."

Thuskings, by graspingmore than they could hold,
First made their subjects by oppression bold;
And pop'lar sway, by forcing kings to give
More than was fit for subjects to receive,
Ran to the same extremes: and one excess
Made both, by striving to be greater, less.
When a calm river, rais'd with sudden rains,
Or snows dissolv'd,o'erflows th'adjoining plains,
The husbandmen with high-rais'd banks secure
Their greedy hopes; and this he can endure.
But if with bays and dams they strive to force
His channel to a new or narrow course,
No longer then within his banks he dwells ;
First to a torrent, then a deluge swells;
Stronger and fiercer by restraint he roars,[shores.
And knows no bound, but make his pow'r his

$25. On M. Abraham Cowley's Death, and Bu-
rial amongst the antient Poets. Denham.
OLD Chaucer, like the morning star,
To us discovers day from far;

His light those wists and clouds dissolv'd
Which our dark nation long involv'd;
But, he descending to the shades,
Darkness again the age invades.
Next (like Aurora) Spenser rose,
Whose purple blush the day foreshows;
The other three with his own fires
Phobus, the poet's god, inspires;
By Shakspeare's, Jonson's, Fletcher's lines
Our stage's lustre Rome outshines;
These poets near our princes sleep,
And in one grave our mansion keep.
They liv'd to see so many days,
Till time had blasted all their bays;
But cursed be the fatal hour
That pluck'd the fairest, sweetest flow'r.

• Runny Mead.

That

That in the Muse's garden grew,

And amongst wither'd laurels threw !
Time, which made their fame out-live,
To Cowley scarce did ripeness give.
Old mother Wit and Nature gave
Shakspeare and Fletcher all they have;
In Spenser, and in Jonson, art
Of slower nature got the start;
But both in him so equal are,

None knows which bears the happiest share.
To him no author was unknown,
Yet what he wrote was all his own;
He melted not the antient gold,
Nor, with Ben Jonson, did ruake bold
To plunder all the Roman stores
Of poets and of orators :
Horace's wit, and Virgil's state,
He did not steal, but emulate!

And when he would like them appear,
Their garb, but not their clothes, did wear:
He not from Rome alone, but Greece,
Lake Jason, brought the golden fleece;
To him that language (though to none
Of th' others) as his own was known.
On a stiff gale (as Flaccus sings)
The Theban swan extends his wings:
When thro' th' ethereal clouds he flies,
To the same pitch our swan doth rise;
Old Pindar's flights by him are reachy'd,
When on that gale his wings are stretch'd:
His fancy and his judgement such,
Each to the other scein'd too much;
His severe judgement (giving law)
His modest fancy kept in awe;
A rigid husbands jealous are,

When they believe their wives too fair.
His English streams so pure did flow,
As all that saw and tasted know;
But for his Latin vein, so clear,
Strong, full, and high, it doth appear,
That, were immortal Virgil here,"
Him for his judge he would not fear;
Of that great portraiture, so true
A copy pencil never drew.

My Muse her song had ended here,
But both their Genii straight appear;
Joy and amazement her did strike,
Two twins she never saw so like.
'Twas taught by wise Pythagoras,
One soul might through more bodies pass:
Seeing such transmigration there,
She thought it not a fable here;
Such a resemblance of all parts,
Life, death, age, fortune, nature, arts;
Then lights her torch at theirs, to tell,
And show the world this parallel ;
Fix'd and contemplative their looks,
Sill turning over nature's books:
Their works chaste, moral, and divine,
Where profit and delight combine ;
Ther, gilding dirt, in noble verse
Rustic philosophy rehearse.

When heroes, gods, or godlike kings They praise, on their exalted wings To the celestial orbs they climb,

And with th' harmonious spheres keep time:
Nor did their actions fall behind

Their words, but with like candor shin'd;
Each drew fair characters, yet none

Of those they feign'd excels their own.
Both by two generous princes lov'd,
Who knew, and judg'd what they approv'd :
Yet having each the same desire,
Both from the busy throng retire.
Their bodies, to their minds resign'd,
Car'd not to propagate their kind:
Yet though both fell before their hour,
Time on their offspring hath no pow'r ;
Nor fire nor fate their bays shall blast,
Nor deatle's dark veil their day o'ercast.

more

§ 26. An Essay on Translated Verse. Earl of Roscommon. HAPPY that author whose correct essay Repairs so well our old Horatian way: And happy you, who (by propitious fate) On great Apollo's sacred standard wait, And with strict discipline instructed right, Have learn'd to use your arms before you fight. But since the press, the pulpit, and the stage, Conspire to censure and expose our age; Provoked too far, we resolutely must, To the few virtues that we have, be just. For who have long'd or who have labor'd To search the treasures of the Roman store, Or dig in Grecian mines for purer ore? The noblest fruits transplanted in our isle, With early hope and fragraut blossoms smile Familiar Óvid tender thoughts inspires, And nature seconds all his soft desires: Theocritus does now to us belong; And Albion's rocks repeat his rural song. Who has not heard how Italy was blest Above the Medes, above the wealthy East? Or Gallus song so tender and so true, As ev'n Lycoris might with pity view! [hearse, When mourning nymphs attend their Dahphis' Who does not weep that reads the moving verse? But hear, oh hear, in what exalted strains Sicilian Muses through these happy plains Proclaim Saturnian times our own Apollo( reigus!

When France hadbreath'd after intestine broils, And peace and conquest crown'd her foreign toils, There (cultivated by a royal hand)

Learning grew fast, and spread, and bless'd the
land;
[known,
The choicest books that Rome or Greece have
Her excellent translators made her own;
And Europe still considerably gains
Both by their good example and their pains.
From hence our generous emulation came;
We undertook, and we perform'd the same.
T3

John Sheffield Duke of Buckingham.

But

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