Unnamed as yet;[176] at least unknown to fame: 
  Is there a strife in Heaven about his name,
  Where every famous predecessor vies,
  And makes a faction for it in the skies? 
  Or must it be reserved to thought alone? 
  Such was the sacred Tetragrammaton.[177]
  Things worthy silence must not be reveal’d;
  Thus the true name of Rome was kept conceal’d,[178]
  To shun the spells and sorceries of those 200
  Who durst her infant majesty oppose. 
  But when his tender strength in time shall rise
  To dare ill tongues, and fascinating eyes;
  This isle, which hides the little Thunderer’s fame,
  Shall be too narrow to contain his name: 
  The artillery of heaven shall make him known;
  Crete[179] could not hold the god, when Jove was grown.

   As Jove’s increase, who from his brain was born,[180]
  Whom arms and arts did equally adorn, 210
  Free of the breast was bred, whose milky taste
  Minerva’s name to Venus had debased;
  So this imperial babe rejects the food
  That mixes monarch’s with plebeian blood: 
  Food that his inborn courage might control,
  Extinguish all the father in his soul,
  And, for his Estian race, and Saxon strain,
  Might reproduce some second Richard’s reign. 
  Mildness he shares from both his parents’ blood: 
  But kings too tame are despicably good:  220
  Be this the mixture of this regal child,
  By nature manly, but by virtue mild.

   Thus far the furious transport of the news
  Had to prophetic madness fired the Muse;
  Madness ungovernable, uninspired,
  Swift to foretell whatever she desired. 
  Was it for me the dark abyss to tread,
  And read the book which angels cannot read? 
  How was I punish’d, when the sudden blast,[181]
  The face of heaven, and our young sun o’ercast! 230
  Fame, the swift ill, increasing as she roll’d,
  Disease, despair, and death, at three reprises told;
  At three insulting strides she stalk’d the town,
  And, like contagion, struck the loyal down. 
  Down fell the winnow’d wheat; but, mounted high,
  The whirlwind bore the chaff, and hid the sky. 
  Here black rebellion shooting from below
  (As earth’s gigantic brood by moments grow[182])
  And here the sons of God are petrified with woe: 
  An apoplex of grief:  so low were driven 240
  The saints, as hardly to defend their heaven.

    As, when pent vapours run their hollow round,
  Earthquakes, which are convulsions of the ground,
  Break bellowing forth, and no confinement brook,
  Till the third settles what the former shook;
  Such heavings had our souls; till, slow and late,
  Our life with his return’d, and Faith prevail’d on Fate. 
  By prayers the mighty blessing was implored,
  To prayers was granted, and by prayers restored.