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Thy genius calls thee not to purchase fame
In keen Iambics, but mild Anagram.

Leave writing plays, and choose for thy command,
Some peaceful province in Acrostic land.
There thou may'st wings display and altars 1 raise,
And torture one poor word ten thousand ways.
Or, if thou wouldst thy different talents suit,
Set thy own songs, and sing them to thy lute.

He said; but his last words were scarcely heard:
For Bruce and Longville 2 had a trap prepared,
And down they sent the yet declaiming bard.
Sinking he left his drugget robe behind,
Borne upwards by a subterranean wind.
The mantle fell to the young prophet's part,
With double portion of his father's art.

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BRITANNIA REDIVIVA:

A POEM ON THE PRINCE, BORN JUNE 10, 1688.

OUR Vows are heard betimes! and Heaven takes care To grant, before we can conclude the

Preventing angels met it half the way,

prayer:

And sent us back to praise, who came to pray.
Just on the day, when the high-mounted Sun
Did farthest in his northern progress run,
He bended forward, and even stretch'd the sphere
Beyond the limits of the lengthen'd year,
To view a brighter sun in Britain born;
That was the business of his longest morn;
The glorious object seen, 'twas time to turn.

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''Wings and altars:' forms in which old acrostics were cast. See Herbert's

'Temple.'- 'Bruce and Longville:' two characters in Shadwell's 'Virtuoso.'

Departing Spring could only stay to shed
Her bloomy beauties on the genial bed,
But left the manly Summer in her stead,
With timely fruit the longing land to cheer,
And to fulfil the promise of the year.

Betwixt two seasons comes th' auspicious heir,
This age to blossom, and the next to bear.

Last solemn Sabbath 1 saw the Church attend,
The Paraclete in fiery pomp descend;
But when his wondrous octave 2 roll'd again,
He brought a royal infant in his train.
So great a blessing to so good a king,
None but th' Eternal Comforter could bring.
Or did the mighty Trinity conspire,
As once in council, to create our sire?
It seems as if they sent the new-born guest
To wait on the procession of their feast;
And on their sacred anniverse decreed
To stamp their image on the promised seed.
Three realms united, and on one bestow'd,
An emblem of their mystic union show'd:
The Mighty Trine the triple empire shared,
As every person would have one to guard.
Hail, son of prayers! by holy violence

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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 sins,
And finish what thy godlike sire begins.
Kind Heaven, to make us Englishmen again,
No less can give us than a patriarch's reign.

The sacred cradle to your charge receive,

Ye seraphs, and by turns the guard relieve;

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1'Solemn Sabbath: Whit Sunday.-2 Wondrous octave:' Trinity Sunday.

Thy father's angel, and thy father join,
To keep possession, and secure the line;
But long defer the honours of thy fate:
Great may they be like his, like his be late;
That James this running century may view,
And give his son an auspice to the new.
Our wants exact at least that moderate stay:
For see the Dragon 1 wingèd on his way,
To watch the travail,2 and devour the prey.
Or, if allusions may not rise so high,
Thus, when Alcides 3 raised his infant cry,
The snakes besieged his young divinity:
But vainly with their forked tongues they threat;
For opposition makes a hero great.

To needful succour all the good will run,
And Jove assert the godhead of his son.

O still repining at your present state,
Grudging yourselves the benefits of fate,
Look up, and read in characters of light
A blessing sent you in your own despite.
The manna falls, yet that celestial bread
Like Jews you munch, and murmur while you feed.
May not your fortune be, like theirs, exiled,

Yet forty years to wander in the wild!
Or if it be, may Moses live at least,

To lead you to the verge of promised 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 rise of empires, and their fall surveys;

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1 'The Dragon :' alluding only to the Commonwealth party, here and in other places of the poem.-2 The travail:' see Rev. xii. 4.—3 'Alcides :' Hercules.

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More, might I say, than with a usual eye,
He sees his bleeding church in ruin lie,
And hears the souls of saints beneath his altar cry.
Already has he lifted high the Sign,1

Which crown'd the conquering arms of Constantine
The Moon 2 grows pale at that presaging sight,
And half her train of stars have lost their light.
Behold another Sylvester,3 to bless

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The sacred standard, and secure success;
Large of his treasures, of a soul so great,
As fills and crowds his universal seat.
Now view at home a second Constantine
(The former too was of the British line ;) *
Has not his healing balm your breaches closed,
Whose exile many sought, and few opposed?
Or, did not Heaven by its eternal doom
Permit those evils, that this good might come?
So manifest, that even the moon-eyed sects
See whom and what this Providence protects.
Methinks, had we within our minds no more
Than that one shipwreck on the fatal Ore,5
That only thought may make us think again,
What wonders God reserves for such a reign.
To dream that Chance his preservation wrought,
Were to think Noah was preserved for naught;
Or the surviving eight were not design'd
To people Earth, and to restore their kind.

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1'Sign:' the sign of the cross, as denoting the Roman Catholic faith."The moon:' the Turkish crescent.-3'Another Sylvester:' the Pope in James II.'s time is here compared to him that governed the Romish Church. in the time of Constantine.-4' British line: St. Helen, mother of Constantine the Great, was an Englishwoman.-5 'Fatal Ore:' the sand-bank on which the Duke of York had like to have been lost in 1682, on his voyage to Scotland, is known by the name of Lemman Ore.

When humbly on the royal babe we gaze,
The manly lines of a majestic face

Give awful joy: 'tis Paradise to look
On the fair frontispiece of Nature's book:
If the first opening page so charms the sight,
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 soul, with an undaunted view,
Looks out, and takes our homage as his due.
See on his future subjects how he smiles,
Nor meanly flatters, nor with craft beguiles;
But with an open face, as on his throne,
Assures our birthrights, and assumes 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 sun.

Fain would the fiends 1 have made a dubious birth,
Loath to confess the Godhead clothed in earth:
But sicken'd, after all their baffled lies,
To find an heir-apparent of the skies:
Abandon'd to despair, still may they grudge,
And, owning not the Saviour, prove the judge.
Not great Æneas 2 stood in plainer day,
When, the dark mantling mist dissolved away,
He to the Tyrians show'd his sudden face,
Shining with all his goddess mother's grace:

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For she herself had made his countenance bright, Breathed honour on his eyes, and her own purple light.

Fiends: the malcontents who doubted the truth of the birth are here compared to the evil spirits that tempted our Saviour in the wilderness. Eneas:' see Virgil; Æneid, I.

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