While our cross stars denied us Charles his bed
Whom our first flames and virgin love did wed.
For his long absence Church and State did groan;
Madness the pulpit, faction seized the throne.
Experienced age in deep despair was lost
To see the rebel thrive, the loyal crost:
Youth that with joys had unacquainted been
Envied gray hairs that once good days had seen :
We thought our sires, not with their own content,
Had, ere we came to age, our portion spent.
Nor could our nobles hope their bold attempt
Who ruined crowns would coronets exempt:

20

25

For when, by their designing leaders taught

30

Their blood to action by the prize was warmed;
The sacred purple then and scarlet gown,"
Like sanguine dye to elephants, was shown.
Thus, when the bold Typhoeus † scaled the sky
And forced great Jove from his own heaven to fly,

To strike at power which for themselves they sought,
The vulgar, gulled into rebellion, armed,

*

35

The lesser gods that shared his prosperous state

(What king, what crown from treason's reach is free
If Jove and Heaven can violated be?)

40

All suffered in the exiled Thunderer's fate.

The rabble now such freedom did enjoy

As winds at sea that use it to destroy:

Blind as the Cyclops and as wild as he,

They owned a lawless savage liberty,

45

Like that our painted ancestors so prized,

Ere empire's arts their breasts had civilized.

How great were then our Charles his woes who thus

Was forced to suffer for himself and us!

50

He, tossed by fate and hurried up and down,

Heir to his father's sorrows with his crown,

Could taste no sweets of youth's desired age,
But found his life too true a pilgrimage.
Unconquered yet in that forlorn estate,
His manly courage overcame his fate.

His wounds he took, like Romans, on his breast,
Which by nis virtue were with laurels drest.
As souls reach Heaven, while yet in bodies pent,
So did he live above his banishment.
That sun, which we beheld with cozened eyes
Within the water, moved along the skies.

"The sacred purple then and scarlet gown:" the Bishops and the Peers. + Typhoeus or Typhon (Tupwevs or Tupus). Milton calls him Typhon:

Typhon, whom the den

By ancient Tarsus held."-Paradise Lost, i. 199.

55

60

A hundred-headed giant of classical mythology, fabled to have once driven Jupiter and the gods from heaven. He was afterwards quelled by Jupiter with a thunderbolt, and stowed away, according to Homer, whom Milton follows, in Cilicia (II. i. 783); but Virgil placed him under the islands Inarime and Prochyta. off the west coast of Italy, near Vesuvius (En. ix. 716).

How easy 'tis, when' Destiny proves kind,
With full-spread sails to run before the wind.
But those that 'gainst stiff gales laveering* go
Must be at once resolved and skilful too.
He would not, like soft Otho,† hope prevent,
But stayed and suffered fortune to repent.
These virtues Galba in a stranger sought
And Piso to adopted empire brought.
How shall I then my doubtful thoughts express
That must his sufferings both regret and bless?
For when his early valour Heaven had crost,
And all at Worcester but the honour lost, +
Forced into exile from his rightful throne,
He made all countries where he came his own,
And, viewing monarchs' secret arts of sway,
A royal factor for their kingdoms lay.

65

70

75

Thus banished David spent abroad his time,

When to be God's anointed was his crime,

80

And, when restored, made his proud neighbours rue

Those choice remarks he from his travels drew.

Nor is he only by afflictions shown

To conquer others' realms, but rule his own;
Recovering hardly what he lost before,

$5

On Night the honoured name of Counseller; $

His right endears it much, his purchase more.
Enured to suffer ere he came to reign,"
No rash procedure will his actions stain.
To business ripened by digestive thought,
His future rule is into method brought,
As they who first proportion understand
With easy practice reach a master's hand.
Well might the ancient poets then confer

90

Since, struck with rays of prosperous fortune blind,
We light alone in dark afflictions find.
In such adversities to sceptres trained,

The name of Great his famous grandsire gained : ||
Who, yet a king alone in name and right,
With hunger, cold, and angry Jove did fight;

* To laveer is to tack; it is a word of Dutch origin:

"To catch opinion as a ship the wind,
Which blowing cross, the pilot backward steers,
And, shifting sails, makes way when he laveers.'

95

100

DAVENANT, p. 280 of Works, fol. 1673

The Roman emperor Otho, of whom Eutropius says that he was "in privata vita mollis. (Book vii. c. 17. Otho had raised an insurrection against his predecessor Galba, when the latter adopted Pise for his successor; and Galba, who had become emperor in June, A.D. 68, was slain in January, A.D. 69. Otho's reign was even shorter. Vitellius disputed his succession; and on the first defeat of his forces by those of Vitellius, he committed suicide at Brixellum near Parma in April, A.D. 69.

A literal adaptation of the celebrated phrase ascribed to Francis I. of France, in announcing to his mother his defeat at Pavia and capture by the Imperial troops in 1525, "Tout est perdu hors l'honneur."

5 Eupporn, a Greek name for Night, is probably meant. It may be translated well-minded or well-judging

Henry IV. of France, maternal grandfather of Charles II.

C

O'er whom Time gently shakes his wings of down
Till with his silent sickle they are mown.

Such is not Charles his too too active age,

Which, governed by the wild distempered rage

Of some black star infecting all the skies,

Made him at his own cost, like Adam, wise.

Tremble, ye nations who, secure before,

Laughed at those arms that 'gainst ourselves we bore;
Roused by the lash of his own stubborn tail,

105

110

115

* Similar instances of rhyme occur in Dryden with the word articles in the "Letter to Sir George Etherege," 37, and with miracles in the "Threnodia Augustalis," 414. These words were probably pronounced miraclees, chroniclees, &c. In lines 14 and 241 miracles, so pronounced, improves the rhythm.

↑ This line is printed in the original edition of 1661:

"In story chasmes, in epoche's mistakes."

And similarly in the second edition of 1688. The apostrophe of epoche's shows that Dryden intended this for the plural of epoche (oxi). Epoches is therefore printed in the text, with omission of the apostrophe now disused; and chasmes is printed chasms, according to modern spelling, the rhythm not being affected, as chasm has a dissyllabic_sound. In the reprint of this poem in the "Miscellany Poems," ed. 1716, epocha's was printed. Derrick turned this into epocha, which is also in Scott's edition.

↑ Strowes in edition of 1661: strows, 1688. Scott has printed strews, which is a common spelling in Dryden, but strows was here designed for the rhyme.

§ Portunus was the protector of harbours in Roman mythology, and was invoked to grant a happy return from a voyage. He is therefore suitably named here. Dryden introduces him also in a later poem, helping to speed the Duchess of Ormond's crossing the Channel to Ireland:

"Portunus took his turn, whose ample hand
Heaved up the lightened keel and sunk the sand "

Dedication of Palamon and Arcite, 48,

Our thaw was mild, the cold not chased away,
But lost in kindly heat of lengthened day.

Heaven would no bargain for its blessings drive,
But what we could not pay for freely give.
The Prince of Peace would, like himself, confer
A gift unhoped without the price of war:

135

140

Yet, as He knew His blessing's worth, took care
That we should know it by repeated prayer,

Which stormed the skies and ravished Charles from thence,
As Heaven itself is took by violence.*

Booth's forward valour only served to show

145

He durst that duty pay we all did owe;

The attempt was fair, but Heaven's prefixed hour +

Not come so, like the watchful travellour+

That by the moon's mistaken light did rise,
Lay down again and closed his weary eyes.
'Twas Monk, whom Providence designed to loose
Those real bonds false freedom did impose.

150

The blessed saints that watched this turning scene
Did from their stars with joyful wonder lean
To see small clues draw vastest weights along,
Not in their bulk but in their order strong
Thus pencils can by one slight touch restore
Smiles to that changed face that wept before.
With ease such fond chimeras we pursue
As Fancy frames for Fancy to subdue;

155

160

But when ourselves to action we betake,

It shuns the mint, like gold that chymists make.
How hard was then his task, at once to be
What in the body natural we see

Man's architect distinctly did ordain

165

The charge of muscles, nerves, and of the brain,
Through viewless conduits spirits to dispense,
The springs of motion from the seat of sense.
'Twas not the hasty product of a day,
But the well-ripened fruit of wise delay.
He, like a patient angler, ere he strook,
Would let them play a while upon the hook.
Our healthful food the stomach labours thus,
At first embracing what it straight doth crush.
Wise leeches will not vain receipts obtrude,
While growing pains pronounce the humours crude:

170

175

St. Matthew xi, 12: "And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force."

+ This line is printed in the early editions:

"Th' attempt was fair, but Heav'n's prefixed hour."

Heaven must therefore be pronounced as one syllable, and prefixed a trisyilable

Travellour in first edition; travellor in edition of 1688. The terminations our, or, and er occur indiscriminately in the early editions of Dryden's poems for words like traveller, oppressor, conqueror, &c. Here our is important for the rhyme, but travellour occurs elsewhere, where the rhyme does not need it. In the opening lines of "Religio Laici," travellers rhymes with stars, as in this poem (line 140) confer with war; the er probably pronounced ar.

Deaf to complaints, they wait upon the ill,
Till some safe crisis authorise their skill.
Nor could his acts too close a vizard wear
To scape their eyes whom guilt had taught to fear,
And guard with caution that polluted nest
Whence Legion twice before was dispossest :*
Once sacred House, which when they entered in,

They thought the place could sanctify a sin;

180

Like those that vainly hoped kind Heaven would wink, 185
While to excess on martyrs' tombs they drink.

And as devouter Turks first warn their souls

So these, when their black crimes they went about,

To part, before they taste forbidden bowls,

First timely charmed their useless conscience out.
Religion's name against itself was made;

190

The shadow served the substance to invade.
Like zealous Missions, they did care pretend
Of souls in show, but made the gold their end.

The incensed powers beheld with scorn from high
An heaven so far distant from the sky,
Which durst with horses' hoofs that beat the ground
And martial brass belie the thunder's sound. +
'Twas hence at length just vengeance thought it fit
To speed their ruin by their impious wit;
Thus Sforza, cursed with a too fertile brain,
Lost by his wiles the power his wit did gain.
Henceforth their fogues must spend at lesser rate
Than in its flames to wrap a nation's fate.
Suffered to live, they are like Helots set
A virtuous shame within us to beget;

195

200

205

For by example most we sinned before

And glass-like clearness mixed with frailty bore.||
But since, reformed by what we did amiss,
We by our sufferings learn to prize our bliss;

210

*

Referring to Cromwell's ejection of the Rump of the Long Parliament in April 1653, and to Lambert's dissolution of it in October 1659, after it had been restored on Richard Cromwell's deposition.

Salmoneus, king of Elis, son of Eolus, wishing to be called a God and treated as such by his subjects, imitated thunder and lightning by driving his chariot over a brazen bridge, and flinging burning torches around him. Jupiter, provoked, struck him dead with a thunderbolt. See Virgil, Æn. vi. 585 789 of Translation):

"Salmoneus suffering cruel pains I found
For emulating Jove, the rattling sound
Of mimic thunder and the glittering blaze
Of pointed lightnings and their forky rays.'

↑ Lodovico Sforza, who murdered his nephew Giovanni Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan, and usurped his dukedom, and after a course of very successful intrigues, was in 1499 driven fro. Italy by Louis XII. of France, and ultimately died a prisoner in France in 1508.

Fogue. So printed in the two early editions, from the French fougue.

Scott, who has placed glass-like between two commas, says in a note that the original edition has "like glass;" but this is a mistake. Both the early editions have " glass-like" without Compare Shakespeare in "Measure for Measure," act 2, sc. 4.

commas.