Great Michael, prince of all the etherial hosts,
And whate'er inborn saints our Britain boasts;*
And thou, the adopted patron of our Isle,†
With cheerful aspects on this infant smile!

The pledge of Heaven, which dropping from above
Secures our bliss and reconciles His love.

150

And reigning blest above, leave him to rule below.
Enough already has the year forslowed¶

His wonted course, the seas have overflowed,
The meads were floated with a weeping spring,
And frightened birds in woods forgot to sing;

170

The strong-limbed steed beneath his harness faints,
And the same shivering sweat his lord attaints.
When will the minister of wrath give o'er?
Behold him, at Araunah's threshing floor :

175

**

He stops, and seems to sheathe his flaming brand,
Pleased with burnt incense from our David's hand.
David has bought the Jebusite's abode,

And raised an altar to the living God.

180

"The motto of the Poem explained." See the motto from Virgil's first Georgic. Dryden has in the third line substituted puerum for juvenem, to make it more appropriate. The passage is thus translated by Dryden:

The "perjuria Laomedontis" of Virgil had a force in Dryden's motto as referring to the perjuries of the witnesses of the Popish Plot.

t "St. George."

§ The Great Fire of London.

1 The Plague of 1666.

The Popish Plot and the Test Act.

See note on forslow in p. 139; where there is an error in saying that Scott has in this passage substituted foreshowed. Other editors have done so.

"Alluding to the passage in the First Book of Kings, ch. xxiv. v. 20." Such is Dryden's note; but he has made a wrong reference. The reference was intended for 2 Samuel xxiv.

Let Conscience, which is Interest ill disguised,

Let his baptismal drops for us atone;

Lustrations for offences not his own.

In the same font be cleansed, and all the land baptized.

190

Unnamed as yet, at least unknown to fame, t

Is there a strife in Heaven about his name,

Where every famous predecessor vies,

And makes a faction for it in the skies?

195

Or must it be reserved to thought alone?

Such was the sacred Tetragrammaton.

Things worthy silence must not be revealed:

Thus the true name of Rome was kept concealed,§
To shun the spells and sorceries of those
Who durst her infant majesty oppose.

But when his tender strength in time shall rise
To dare ill tongues and fascinating eyes,

This Isle, which hides the little Thunderer's fame,
Shall be too narrow to contain his name:
The artillery of Heaven shall make him known;
Crete could not hold the god, when Jove was grown.||
As Jove's increase,¶ who from his brain was born,
Whom arms and arts did equally adorn,
Free of the breast was bred, whose milky taste
Minerva's name to Venus had debased ;**
So this imperial babe rejects the food
That mixes monarchs with plebeian blood :
Food that his inborn courage might control,
Extinguish all the father in his soul,

And for his Estian race and Saxon strain ††
Might reproduce some second Richard's reign.
Mildness he shares from both his parents' blood:
But kings too tame are despicably good:

205

210

215

↑ "Jehovah, or the name of God, unlawful to be pronounced by the Jews.' § "Some authors say, that the true name of Rome was kept a secret: Ne hostes incantamentis deos elicerent." Where these Latin words come from has not been ascertained. See Macrobius (Saturnalia, iii. 9) and Pliny (Nat. Hist. v. 5) on the subject of this superstitious concealment of the true name of Rome, lest enemies might make use of it to evoke the protecting deities. was a superstition that when the protecting gods left a city, it fell and this superstition is believed to be referred to in a passage of the Eneid (ii. 351) on the destruction of Troy, alluded to in Dryden's poem to Lord Chancellor Clarendon, line 20, where see the note.

ག

"Candie, where Jupiter was born, and lived secretly."

There

"Cara deum suboles, magnum Jovis incrementum."

VIRG. Ecl. iv. 49.

In the case of the

**"Pallas, or Minerva, said by the poets to have been bred up by hand." infant prince, the wet-nurse was dispensed with.

tt The Prince's mother, Mary of Modena, was an Este.

Be this the mixture of this regal child,
By nature manly, but by virtue mild.

*

Thus far the furious transport of the news
Had to prophetic madness fired the Muse:
Madness ungovernable, uninspired,
Swift to foretell whatever she desired.
Was it for me the dark abyss to tread,
And read the book which angels cannot read?
How was I punished when the sudden blast
The face of heaven and our young sun o'ercast!
Fame, the swift ill, increasing as she rolled,
Disease, despair, and death at three reprises told :
At three insulting strides she stalked the town,
And, like contagion, struck the loyal down.
Down fell the winnowed wheat; but mounted high,
The whirlwind bore the chaff, and hid the sky.
Here black rebellion shooting from below,
(As earth's gigantic brood by moments grow, †)
And here the sons of God are petrified with woe:
An apoplex of grief! so low were driven
The saints as hardly to defend their heaven.

As, when pent vapours run their hollow round,
Earthquakes, which are convulsions of the ground,
Break bellowing forth, and no confinement brook,
Till the third settles what the former shook ;
Such heavings had our souls, till, slow and late,

220

225

230

235

240

245

Our life with his returned, and Faith prevailed on Fate.

Ran, prayed, and sent his pastoral staff before,

Then stretched his limbs upon the child, and mourned, 255

Till warmth and breath and a new soul returned.

Thus Mercy stretches out her hand, and saves
Desponding Peter sinking in the waves.§

As when a sudden storm of hail and rain
Beats to the ground the yet unbearded grain.
Think not the hopes of harvest are destroyed
On the flat field and on the naked void;

260

The light unloaded stem, from tempest freed,
Will raise the youthful honours of his head;
And, soon restored by native vigour, bear
The timely product of the bounteous year.

265

"The sudden false report of the Prince's death."

"Those giants are feigned to have grown fifteen ells every day." What Dryden here refers

to has not been ascertained.

"In the Second Book of Kings, chap. iv."

§ St. Matthew, chap. xiv.

Thus Israel sinned, impenitently hard,

285

And vainly thought the present ark their guard ;'

But when the haughty Philistines appear,

They fled, abandoned to their foes and fear;
Their God was absent, though his ark was there.

Ah! lest our crimes should snatch this pledge away,

290

And make our joys the blessing of a day!

For we have sinned him hence, and that he lives

God to his promise, not our practice, gives.

Our crimes would soon weigh down the guilty scale,

But James and Mary and the Church prevail.
Nor Amalek can rout the chosen bands,

295

While Hur and Aaron hold up Moses' hands. †

By living well let us secure his days;
Moderate in hopes and humble in our ways.
No force the free-born spirit can constrain,
But charity and great examples gain.
Forgiveness is our thanks for such a day;
'Tis god-like God in his own coin to pay.

300

But you, propitious Queen, translated here

From your mild heaven to rule our rugged sphere,

305

Beyond the sunny walks and circling year;

You, who your native climate have bereft
Of all the virtues, and the vices left;

Whom piety and beauty make their boast,
Though beautiful is well in pious lost;
So lost as star-light is dissolved away
And melts into the brightness of the day,
Or gold about the regal diadem,
Lost to improve the lustre of the gem.

*" 1 Samuel iv. 1o."

310

"Exod. xvii. 8." Compare "Verses to the Duchess of York," 29, p. 33. See note on Threnodia Augustalis," line 353

315

What can we add to your triumphant day?
Let the great gift the beautious giver pay;
For should our thanks awake the rising sun,

And lengthen, as his latest shadows run,

That, though the longest day, would soon, too soon, be done.

Let angels' voices with their harps conspire,

320

And feared a title that reproached their lives.

The Power from which all kings derive their state,

345

Whom they pretend at least to imitate,

Is equal both to punish and reward;

For few would love their God, unless they feared.
Resistless force and immortality

Make but a lame, imperfect deity;

350

Tempests have force unbounded to destroy,
And deathless being even the damned enjoy;
And yet Heaven's attributes both last and first,
One without life, and one with life accurst:
But Justice is Heaven's self, so strictly He
That, could it fail, the Godhead could not be.
This virtue is your own; but life and state
Are one to Fortune subject, one to Fate :
Equal to all, you justly frown or smile;
Nor hopes nor fears your steady hand beguile;
Your self our balance hold, the world's our Isle.

355

360

* "Aristides; see his Life in Plutarch."