To welcome your approach the vulgar run,
Like fome new envoy from the distant fun,
And country beauties by their lovers go,
Bleffing themselves, and wondering at the show.
So when the new-born Phoenix firft is seen,
Her feather'd fubjects all adore their queen,
And while fhe makes her progrefs through the East,
From every grove her numerous train's increas'd:
Each Poet of the air her glory fings,

And round him the pleas'd audience clap their wings.

A N

ANNUS MIRABILIS:

THE

YEAR OF WONDERS,

MDCLXVI.

AN HISTORICAL POEM.

To the METROPOLIS of GREAT-BRITAIN, the most renowned and late flourishing CITY of LONDON, in its REPRESENTATIVES, the LORD-MAYOR and Court of ALDERMEN, the SHERIFFS, and COMMON-COUNCIL of it.

AS perhaps I am the first who ever prefented a work

of this nature to the metropolis of any nation; fo it is likewife confonant to juftice, that he who was to give the first example of fuch a dedication should begin it with that city, which has fet a pattern to all others of true loyalty, invincible courage, and unshaken constancy. Other cities have been praised for the fame virtues, but I am much deceived if any have fo dearly purchased their reputation; their fame has been won them by cheaper trials than an expensive, though necessary war, a confuming peftilence, and a more confuming fire. To submit yourselves with that humility to the judgments of heaven, and at the fame time to raise yourselves with that vigour above all human enemies; to be combated at once from above and from below, to be ftruck down and to triumph: I know not whether fuch trials have been ever paralleled in any nation the refolution and fucceffes of them never can be. Never had prince or people more mutual reason to love each other, if fuffering for each other can endear affection. You have come together a pair of matchless lovers, through many difficulties; he, through a long exile, various traverfes of fortune, and the interposition

:

of

:

of many rivals, who violently ravished and with-held you from him and certainly you have had your share in fufferings. But Providence has caft upon you want of trade, that you might appear bountiful to your country's neceffities; and the reft of your afflictions are not more the effects of God's displeasure (frequent examples of them having been in the reign of the most excellent princes) than occafions for the manifefting of your chriftian and civil virtues. To you therefore this Year of Wonders is juftly dedicated, because you have made it fo. You, who are to stand a wonder to all years and ages; and who have built yourselves an immortal monument on your own ruins. You are now a Phoenix in her afhes, and, as far as humanity can approach, a great emblem of the fuffering Deity: but heaven never made fo much piety and virtue to leave it miserable. I have heard, indeed, of fome virtuous perfons who have ended unfortunately, but never of any virtuous nation: Providence is engaged too deeply when the cause becomes fo general; and I cannot imagine it has refolved the ruin of that people at home, which it has bleffed abroad with fuch fucceffes. I am therefore to

conclude, that your fufferings are at an end; and that one part of my poem has not been more an history of your destruction, than the other a prophecy of your reftoration. The accomplishment of which happiness, as it is the wish of all true Englishmen, fo is it by none more paffionately defired, than by,

The greateft of your admirers,

And most humble of your fervants,
JOHN DRYDEN.

An