With these, returns victorious Montague,
With laurels in his hand, and half Peru. 
Let the brave generals divide that bough,
Our great Protector hath such wreaths enow;
His conqu’ring head has no more room for bays;
Then let it be as the glad nation prays;
Let the rich ore forthwith be melted down,
And the state fix’d by making him a crown;
With ermine clad, and purple, let him hold
A royal sceptre, made of Spanish gold. 110

[1] ‘Fight at sea’:  see any good English History, under date 1656. [2] ‘Marquis’:  of Badajos, viceroy of Mexico.

UPON THE DEATH OF THE LORD PROTECTOR.

We must resign!  Heaven his great soul does claim
In storms, as loud as his immortal fame;
His dying groans, his last breath, shakes our isle,
And trees uncut fall for his funeral pile;
About his palace their broad roots are toss’d
Into the air.[1]—­So Romulus was lost! 
New Rome in such a tempest miss’d her king,
And from obeying fell to worshipping. 
On Oeta’s top thus Hercules lay dead, 9
With ruin’d oaks and pines about him spread;
The poplar, too, whose bough he wont to wear
On his victorious head, lay prostrate there;
Those his last fury from the mountain rent: 
Our dying hero from the Continent
Ravish’d whole towns:  and forts from Spaniards reft
As his last legacy to Britain left. 
The ocean, which so long our hopes confined,
Could give no limits to his vaster mind;
Our bounds’ enlargement was his latest toil,
Nor hath he left us pris’ners to our isle; 20
Under the tropic is our language spoke,
And part of Flanders hath received our yoke. 
From civil broils he did us disengage,
Found nobler objects for our martial rage;
And, with wise conduct, to his country show’d
The ancient way of conquering abroad. 
Ungrateful then! if we no tears allow
To him, that gave us peace and empire too. 
Princes, that fear’d him, grieve, concern’d to see
No pitch of glory from the grave is free. 30
Nature herself took notice of his death,
And, sighing, swell’d the sea with such a breath,
That, to remotest shores her billows roll’d,
The approaching fate of their great ruler told.

[1] ‘The air’:  a tremendous tempest blew over England (not on the day),
    but a day or two before Cromwell’s death.  It was said that something
    of the same sort, along with an eclipse of the sun, took place on
    the removal of Romulus.

ON ST JAMES’S PARK, AS LATELY IMPROVED BY HIS MAJESTY.[1]

Of the first Paradise there’s nothing found;
Plants set by Heaven are vanish’d, and the ground;
Yet the description lasts; who knows the fate
Of lines that shall this paradise relate?