from your royal oak, like Jove's of old,
Are answers sought, and destinies foretold: 130
Propitious oracles are begg'd with vows,
And crowns that grow upon the sacred boughs.
Your subjects, while you weigh the nation's fate,
Suspend to both their doubtful love or hate:
Choose only, Sir, that so they may possess,
With their own peace their children's happiness.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 30: 'Royal bed:' the river led from the Thames through St
James' Park.]

* * * * *

TO THE LORD CHANCELLOR HYDE.[31]

PRESENTED ON NEW YEAR'S DAY, 1662.

My Lord,
While flattering crowds officiously appear
To give themselves, not you, a 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:
Decay'd by time and wars, they only prove
Their former beauty by your former love; 10
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 suffer'd banishment.
Thus once, when Troy was wrapp'd in fire and smoke,
The helpless gods their burning shrines forsook; 20
They with the vanquish'd prince and party go,
And leave their temples empty to the foe.
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. 30

In open prospect nothing bounds our eye,
Until the earth seems join'd 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 join'd,
And beyond that no farther heaven can find.
So well your