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. 30
  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
  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 the inveterate habit of our sins,
  And finish what thy godlike sire begins. 40
  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;
  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. 50

    Our wants exact at least that moderate stay: 
  For see the Dragon[163] winged on his way,
  To watch the travail,[164] and devour the prey. 
  Or, if allusions may not rise so high,
  Thus, when Alcides[165] 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, 60
  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, 70
  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;
  More, might I say, than with an usual eye,
  He sees his bleeding church in ruin lie,
  And hears the souls of saints beneath his altar cry. 80
  Already has he lifted high the Sign,[166]
  Which crown’d the conquering arms of Constantine;
  The Moon[167] grows pale at that presaging sight,
  And half her train of stars have lost their light.