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No promise can oblige a prince so much
Still to be good as long to have been such.
A noble emulation heats your breast,
And your own fame now robs you of your rest.
Good actions still must be maintained with good,
As bodies nourished with resembling food.
You have already quenched sedition's brand;
And zeal, which burnt it, only warms the land.
The jealous sects, that dare not trust their cause
So far from their own will as to the laws,
You for their umpire and their synod take
And their appeal alone to Cæsar make.*
Kind Heaven so rare a temper did provide
That guilt repenting might in it confide.
Among our crimes oblivion may be set,
But 'tis our King's perfection to forget.

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Virtues unknown to these rough northern climes

From milder heavens you bring, without their crimes,

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Your calmness does no after-storms provide

Nor seeming patience mortal anger hide.

When empire first from families did spring,
Then every father governed as a king:

But you, that are a sovereign prince, allay
Imperial power with your paternal sway.

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From those great cares when ease your soul unbends,

Your pleasures are designed to noble ends;
Born to command the mistress of the seas,

Your thoughts themselves in that blue empire please.
Hither in summer evenings you repair
To take the fraischeur of the purer air:
Undaunted here you ride, when winter raves,
With Caesar's heart that rose above the waves. †
More I could sing, but fear my numbers stays;
No loyal subject dares that courage praise.
In stately frigates most delight you find,
Where well-drawn battles fire your martial mind.
What to your cares we owe is learnt from hence,
When even your pleasures serve for our defence.

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The King had issued a Declaration concerning ecclesiastical affairs in October 1660, which gave great satisfaction to the Presbyterians: in it he had signified his intention of submitting the Liturgy to revision by a synod composed equally of episcopalian and presbyterian divines and asking the advice of Convocation on matters of ceremony and discipline, and he had repeated the promise of his Declaration from Breda of “liberty to tender consciences, and that no man should be disquieted or called in question for differences of opinion in matters of religion, which do not disturb the peace of the kingdom." A bill introduced into the Convention Parliament shortly after for confirming this Declaration was rejected, some leading presbyterian members joining with the King's ministers in opposing it. The matter was thus left in the hands of the King, who proceeded to call a synod for revising the Liturgy. This synod had assembled about a month before the Coronation, and was now sitting at Savoy House. The result was unsatisfactory, and the Uniformity Act afterwards dashed the hopes of Nonconformists and the King's promises.

Referring to the story told by Plutarch of Caesar's courage in a storm at sea, when, being on board in disguise, he made himself known to the pilot who had determined to put back, and bade him proceed with the words, "Go on, my man; have courage, and fear nothing you carry in your vessel Cæsar and Cæsar's fortune." But the comparison is a piece of hyperbolical flattery.

Beyond your court flows in the admitted tide,*
Where in new depths the wondering fishes glide:
Here in a royal bed the waters sleep,

When tired at sea within this bay they creep.
Here the mistrustful fowl no harm suspects,
So safe are all things which our King protects.
From your loved Thames a blessing yet is due,
Second alone to that it brought in you;

A Queen, from whose chaste womb, ordained by fate,
The souls of kings unborn for bodies wait.

It was your love before made discord cease;

Your love is destined to your country's peace.
Both Indies, rivals in your bed, provide

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With gold or jewels to adorn your bride;

This to a mighty King presents rich ore,

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While that with incense does a God implore.

Two kingdoms wait your doom; and, as you choose,

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Your subjects, while you weigh the nations' fate, +

Suspend to both their doubtful love or hate:
Choose only, Sir, that so they may possess

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With their own peace their children's happiness.

Charles had arranged the ornamental water in St. James's Park, supplied from the Thames. Waller wrote a poem in this same year, “On St. James's Park as lately improved by His Majesty," and introduced the sea with similar magniloquence:

"Instead of rivers rolling by the side

Of Eden's garden, here flows in the tide;

The sea, which always served his empire, now
Pays tribute to our Prince's pleasure too.'

This has been printed by all editors nation's fate. Nations of the original text serves for either nation's or nations'. The reference seems to be to the fate of Spain and Portugal; and the probable meaning is that the independence of Portugal turned on the marriage of Charles with the Portuguese princess. Spain endeavoured to prevent this marriage, and to induce Charles to marry a princess of Parma.

ΤΟ MY LORD CHANCELLOR.

PRESENTED ON NEW YEAR'S DAY, 1662:

MY LORD,

WHILE flattering crowds officiously appear
To give themselves, not you, an happy year,
And by the greatness of their presents prove
How much they hope, but not how well they love,
The Muses, who your early courtship boast,*
Though now your flames are with their beauty lost,
Yet watch their time, that, if you have forgot
They were your mistresses, the world may not:
Decayed by time and wars, they only prove
Their former beauty by your former love,
And now present, as ancient ladies do
That courted long at length are forced to woo.
For still they look on you with such kind eyes
As those that see the Church's Sovereign rise,
From their own order chose,† in whose high state
They think themselves the second choice of fate.
When our great Monarch into exile went,
Wit and religion suffered banishment.

Thus once, when Troy was wrapt in fire and smoke,
The helpless gods their burning shrines forsook ;‡
They with the vanquished prince and party go
And leave their temples empty to the foe.

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* There is no trace of poetry written by Clarendon when young; but he had cultivated general literature, and had many literary friends in his younger days. "Among his early literary friends were Ben Jonson; Selden, whose society he felt to have been inestimably valuable to him, and for whose talents and learning he retained a veneration unimpaired by subsequent difference of political opinion; Charles Cotton, a man of taste and letters, now remembered chiefly as the literary associate of Isaac Walton; May, the able and candid historian of the parliament; Carew, whose graceful poetry still holds its place in public estimation; his more celebrated contemporary, Edmund Waller; the accomplished and versatile Sir Kenelm Digby; Hales, distinguished by his classical acquirements; Chillingworth, the profound theologian and acute controversialist: these were the literary men whose society was cultivated by Hyde."-LISTER'S Life of Clarendon,i. 15. ↑ The Pope.

At the destruction of Troy:

"Excessere omnes, adytis ari que relictis,
Di quibus imperium hoc steterat."

VIRG. n. ii 351.

"The passive gods beheld the Greeks defile
Their temples, and abandon to the spoil
Their own abodes."

473 of Dryden's Translation.

At length the Muses stand restored again
To that great charge which nature did ordain,
And their loved Druids seem revived by fate,
While you dispense the laws and guide the state.
The nation's soul, our Monarch, does dispense
Through you to us his vital influence;
You are the channel where those spirits flow
And work them higher as to us they go.

In open prospect nothing bounds our eye
Until the earth seems joined unto the sky :
So in this hemisphere our utmost view
Is only bounded by our King and you.
Our sight is limited where you are joined

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And beyond that no farther heaven can find.

So well your virtues do with his agree

That, though your orbs of different greatness be,
Yet both are for each other's use disposed,

His to enclose, and yours to be enclosed :
Nor could another in your room have been,
Except an emptiness* had come between.
Well may he then to you his cares impart
And share his burden where he shares his heart.
In you his sleep still wakes; his pleasures find
Their share of business in your labouring mind.
So, when the weary sun his place resigns,
He leaves his light and by reflection shines.

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Justice, that sits and frowns where public laws
Exclude soft mercy from a private cause,
In your tribunal most herself does please;
There only smiles because she lives at ease,

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And, like young David, finds her strength the more
When disencumbered from those arms she wore.
Heaven would your royal master should exceed
Most in that virtue, which we most did need;

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And his mild father, who too late did find

All mercy vain but what with power was joined,

His fatal goodness left to fitter times,

Not to increase but to absolve our crimes :

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He wisely tied it to the Crown again :

Yet, passing through your hands, it gathers more,

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As streams through mines bear tincture of their ore.

While empiric politicians use deceit,

Hide what they give and cure but by a cheat,

You boldly show that skill which they pretend

And work by means as noble as your end:

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Which should you veil, we might unwind the clue
As men do nature, till we came to you.

An emptiness, a vacuum.

And as the Indies were not found before
Those rich perfumes which from the happy shore
The winds upon their balmy wings conveyed,
Whose guilty sweetness first their world betrayed,
So by your counsels we are brought to view
A rich and undiscovered world in you.
By you our Monarch does that fame assure
Which kings must have, or cannot live secure :
For prosperous princes gain the subjects' heart,
Who love that praise in which themselves have part.
By you he fits those subjects to obey,
As Heaven's Eternal Monarch does convey
His power unseen, and man to His designs
By His bright ministers, the stars, inclines.

Our setting sun from his declining seat
Shot beams of kindness on you, not of heat:
And, when his love was bounded in a few
That were unhappy that they might be true,
Made you the favourite of his last sad times,
That is, a sufferer in his subjects' crimes:
Thus those first favours you received were sent,
Like Heaven's rewards, in earthly punishment.
Yet Fortune, conscious of your destiny,

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Even then took care to lay you softly by,

And wrapt your fate among her precious things,

Kept fresh to be unfolded with your King's.

Shown all at once, you dazzled so our eyes

As new-born Pallas did the gods surprise;

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When, springing forth from Jove's new-closing wound,
She struck the warlike spear into the ground;
Which sprouting leaves did suddenly enclose,
And peaceful olives shaded as they rose.

How strangely active are the arts of peace,
Whose restless motions less than war's do cease!
Peace is not freed from labour, but from noise.
And war more force, but not more pains employs.
Such is the mighty swiftness of your mind
That, like the earth's, it leaves our sense behind,
While you so smoothly turn and roll our sphere
That rapid motion does but rest appear.
For as in Nature's swiftness, with the throng
Of flying orbs while ours is borne along,
All seems at rest to the deluded eye,
Moved by the soul of the same harmony,
So, carried on by your unwearied care,
We rest in peace and yet in motion share.
Let Envy then those crimes within you see
From which the happy never must be free;
Envy that does with misery reside,
The joy and the revenge of ruined pride.
Think it not hard, if at so cheap a rate
You can secure the constancy of Fate,

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