5 But vow’d I have, and never must
  Your banish’d servant trouble you;
  For if I break, you may mistrust
  The vow I made—­to love you too.

A PANEGYRIC TO MY LORD PROTECTOR,
OF THE PRESENT GREATNESS, AND JOINT INTEREST, OF HIS HIGHNESS, AND THIS
NATION.[1]

1 While with a strong and yet a gentle hand,
  You bridle faction, and our hearts command,
  Protect us from ourselves, and from the foe,
  Make us unite, and make us conquer too;

2 Let partial spirits still aloud complain,
  Think themselves injured that they cannot reign,
  And own no liberty but where they may
  Without control upon their fellows prey.

3 Above the waves as Neptune show’d his face,
  To chide the winds, and save the Trojan race,
  So has your Highness, raised above the rest,
  Storms of ambition, tossing us, repress’d.

4 Your drooping country, torn with civil hate,
  Restored by you, is made a glorious state;
  The seat of empire, where the Irish come,
  And the unwilling Scots, to fetch their doom.

5 The sea’s our own; and now all nations greet,
  With bending sails, each vessel of our fleet;
  Your power extends as far as winds can blow,
  Or swelling sails upon the globe may go.

6 Heaven (that hath placed this island to give law,
  To balance Europe, and her states to awe),
  In this conjunction doth on Britain smile;
  The greatest leader, and the greatest isle!

7 Whether this portion of the world were rent,
  By the rude ocean, from the continent,
  Or thus created, it was sure design’d
  To be the sacred refuge of mankind.

8 Hither th’oppressed shall henceforth resort,
  Justice to crave, and succour, at your court;
  And then your Highness, not for ours alone,
  But for the world’s Protector shall be known.

9 Fame, swifter than your winged navy, flies
  Through every land that near the ocean lies,
  Sounding your name, and telling dreadful news
  To all that piracy and rapine use.

10 With such a chief the meanest nation bless’d,
  Might hope to lift her head above the rest;
  What may be thought impossible to do
  By us, embraced by the sea and you?

11 Lords of the world’s great waste, the ocean, we
  Whole forests send to reign upon the sea,
  And every coast may trouble, or relieve;
  But none can visit us without your leave.

12 Angels and we have this prerogative,
  That none can at our happy seats arrive;
  While we descend at pleasure, to invade
  The bad with vengeance, and the good to aid.

13 Our little world, the image of the great,
  Like that, amidst the boundless ocean set,
  Of her own growth hath all that Nature craves,
  And all that’s rare, as tribute from the waves.

14 As Egypt does not on the clouds rely,
  But to the Nile owes more than to the sky;
  So what our earth, and what our heaven denies,
  Our ever constant friend, the sea, supplies.