Our setting sun, from his
declining seat,
Shot beams of kindness on you, not of
heat:
And, when his love was bounded in a few
That were unhappy that they might be true,
90
Made you the favourite of his last sad
times,
That is a sufferer in his subjects’
crimes:
Thus those first favours you received,
were sent,
Like heaven’s rewards in earthly
punishment.
Yet fortune, conscious of your destiny,
Even then took care to lay you softly
by;
And wrapp’d your fate among her
precious things,
Kept fresh to be unfolded with your king’s.
Shown all at once, you dazzled so our
eyes,
As new born Pallas did the gods surprise,
100
When, springing forth from Jove’s
new-closing wound,
She struck the warlike spear into the
ground;
Which sprouting leaves did suddenly enclose,
And peaceful olives shaded as they rose.
How strangely active are the
arts of peace,
Whose restless motions less than war’s
do cease!
Peace is not freed from labour but from
noise;
And war more force, but not more pains
employs;
Such is the mighty swiftness of your mind,
That, like the earth, it leaves our sense
behind; 110
While you so smoothly turn and roll our
sphere,
That rapid motion does but rest appear.
For, as in nature’s swiftness, with
the throng
Of flying orbs while ours is borne along,
All seems at rest to the deluded eye,
Moved by the soul of the same harmony,—
So, carried on by your unwearied care,
We rest in peace, and yet in motion share.
Let envy then those crimes within you
see,
From which the happy never must be free;
120
Envy, that does with misery reside,
The joy and the revenge of ruin’d
pride.
Think it not hard, if at so cheap a rate
You can secure the constancy of fate,
Whose kindness sent what does their malice
seem,
By lesser ills the greater to redeem.
Nor can we this weak shower a tempest
call,
But drops of heat, that in the sunshine
fall.
You have already wearied fortune so,
She cannot further be your friend or foe;
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But sits all breathless, and admires to
feel
A fate so weighty, that it stops her wheel.
In all things else above our humble fate,
Your equal mind yet swells not into state,
But, like some mountain in those happy
isles,
Where in perpetual spring young nature
smiles,
Your greatness shows: no horror to
affright,
But trees for shade, and flowers to court
the sight:
Sometimes the hill submits itself a while
In small descents, which do its height
beguile: 140
And sometimes mounts, but so as billows
play,
Whose rise not hinders, but makes short
our way.
Your brow, which does no fear of thunder