Or did the mighty Trinity confpire,
As once in council to create our fire ?
It feems as if they fent the new-born guest
To wait on the proceffion of their feast;
And on their facred anniverse decreed
To stamp their image on the promis'd feed.
Three realms united, and on one bestow'd,
An emblem of their mystic union show'd:
The mighty trine the triple empire shar'd :
As every perfon would have one to guard.
Hail, Son of prayers! by holy violence
Drawn down from heaven; but long be banish'd thence,
And late to thy paternal skies retire :
To mend our crimes, whole ages would require;
To change th' inveterate habit of our fins,
And finish what thy godlike fire begins.
Kind heaven, to make us Englishmen again,
No less ean give us than a patriarch's reign.
The facred cradle to your charge receive,
Ye seraphs, and by turns the guard relieve;
Thy father's angel, and thy father join,
To keep poffeffion, and secure the line;
But long defer the honours of thy fate:
Great may they be like his, like his be late;
That James his running century may view,
And give this Son an aufpice to the new.
Our wants exact at least that moderate stay :
For fee the dragon winged on his way,
To watch the travail, and devour the prey.
Or, if allusions may not rise so high,
Thus, when Alcides rais'd his infant cry,
The snakes besieg'd his young divinity:
But vainly with their forked tongues they threat;
For oppofition makes a hero great.
To needful fuccour all the good will run,
And Jove affert the godhead of his Son.
O ftill repining at your present state,
Grudging yourselves the benefits of fate,
Look up, and read in characters of light
A blessing fent you in your own despight.
The manna falls, yet that celestial bread
Like Jews you munch, and murmur while you feed.
May not your fortune be like theirs, exil'd,
Yet forty years to wander in the wild!
Or if it be, may Mofes live at least,
To lead you to the verge of promis'd rest!
Though poets are not prophets, to foreknow What plants will take the blight, and what will grow, By tracing heaven, his footsteps may be found : Behold! how awfully he walks the round! God is abroad, and, wondrous in his ways, The rife of empires, and their fall surveys ; More, might I fay, than with an usual eye, He fees his bleeding church in ruin lie, And hears the souls of faints beneath his altar cry. Already has he lifted high the fign,
Which crown'd the conquering arms of Constantine : The moon grows pale at that presaging fight,
And half her train of stars have lost their light.
Behold another Sylvester, to bless
The facred standard, and fecure success;
Large of his treasures, of a foul so great,
As fills and crowds his universal feat.
Now view at home a second Constantine
(The former too was of the British line);
Has not his healing balm your breaches clos'd,
Whose exile many fought, and few oppos'd?
O, did not heaven by its eternal doom
Permit those evils, that this good might come ?
So manifest, that ev'n the moon-ey'd fects
See whom and what this Providence protects.
Methinks, had we within our minds no more
Than that one shipwreck on the fatal ore,
That only thought may make us think again,
What wonders God referves for fuch a reign.
To dream that chance his prefervation wrought,
Were to think Noah was preserv'd for nought;
Or the furviving eight were not defign'd
To people earth, and to restore their kind.
When humbly on the royal babe we gaze,
The manly lines of a majestic face
Give awful joy: 'tis paradife to look
On the fair frontispiece of Nature's book :
If the first opening page so charms the fight,
Think how th' unfolded volume will delight!
See how the venerable infant lies
In early pomp; how through the mother's eyes
The father's foul, with an undaunted view,
Looks out, and takes our homage as his due.
See on his future fubjects how he similes,
Nor meanly flatters, nor with craft beguiles;
But with an open face, as on his throne,
Affures our birthrights, and affumes his own :
Born in broad day-light, that th' ungrateful rout
May find no room for a remaining doubt;
Truth, which itself is light, does darkness shun,
And the true eaglet safely dares the fun.
Fain would the fiends have made a dubious birth,
Loth to confess the Godhead cloath'd in earth:
But ficken'd after all their baffled lies,
To find an heir apparent in the skies :
Abandon'd to defpair, still may they grudge,
And, owning not the Saviour, prove the judge.
Not great Æneas stood in plainer day,
When the dark mantling mist disfolv'd away,
He to the Tyrians shew'd his fudden face,
Shining with all his goddess mother's grace :
For the herself had made his countenance bright,
Breath'd honour on his eyes, and her own purple light.
If our victorious Edward, as they say,
Gave Wales a prince on that propitious day,
Why may not years revolving with his fate
Produce his like, but with a longer date ?
One, who may carry to a distant shore
The terror that his fam'd forefather bore.
But why should James or his young hero stay
For flight presages of a name or day?
We need no Edward's fortune to adorn
That happy moment when our prince was born
Our prince adorns this day, and ages hence
Shall with his birth-day for fome future prince.
Great Michael, prince of all th' ætherial hosts,
And whate'er inborn faints our Britain boasts;
And thou, th' adopted patron of our ifle,
With chearful aspects on this infant smile:
The pledge of heaven, which, dropping from above,
Secures our bliss, and reconciles his love.
Enough of ills our dire rebellion wrought,
When to the dregs we drank the bitter draught;
Then airy atoms did in plagues confpire,
Nor did th' avenging angel yet retire,
But purg'd our still-increasing crimes with fire.
Then perjur'd plots, the still impending test,
And worfe-but charity conceals the reft:
Here stop the current of the fanguine flood;
Require not, gracious God, thy martyrs' blood;
But let their dying pangs, their living toil,
Spread a rich harvest through their native foil;
A harvest ripening for another reign,
Of which this royal babe may reap the grain.
Enough of early saints one womb has given;
Enough increas'd the family of heaven :
Let them for his, and our atonement go;
And, reigning blest above, leave him to rule below.
Enough already has the year foreshow'd
His wonted course, the fea has overflow'd,
The meads were floated with a weeping spring,
And frighten'd birds in woods forgot to fing:
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