spiteful blast,
The dazzling glory dims their prostituted sight,
  No deflower’d eye can face the naked light: 
  Yet does this high perfection well proceed
    From strength of its own native seed,
This wilderness, the world, like that poetic wood of old,
    Bears one, and but one branch of gold,
  Where the bless’d spirit lodges like the dove,
And which (to heavenly soil transplanted) will improve,
To be, as ’twas below, the brightest plant above;
  For, whate’er theologic levellers dream,
    There are degrees above, I know,
    As well as here below,
  (The goddess Muse herself has told me so),
  Where high patrician souls, dress’d heavenly gay,
  Sit clad in lawn of purer woven day. 
There some high-spirited throne to Sancroft shall be given,
    In the metropolis of Heaven;
Chief of the mitred saints, and from archprelate here,
    Translated to archangel there.

XII

Since, happy saint, since it has been of late
  Either our blindness or our fate,
  To lose the providence of thy cares
Pity a miserable church’s tears,
  That begs the powerful blessing of thy prayers. 
  Some angel, say, what were the nation’s crimes,
  That sent these wild reformers to our times: 
    Say what their senseless malice meant,
    To tear religion’s lovely face: 
  Strip her of every ornament and grace;
In striving to wash off th’imaginary paint? 
  Religion now does on her death-bed lie,
Heart-sick of a high fever and consuming atrophy;
How the physicians swarm to show their mortal skill,
And by their college arts methodically kill: 
Reformers and physicians differ but in name,
  One end in both, and the design the same;
Cordials are in their talk, while all they mean
  Is but the patient’s death, and gain—­
  Check in thy satire, angry Muse,
  Or a more worthy subject choose: 
Let not the outcasts of an outcast age
Provoke the honour of my Muse’s rage,
  Nor be thy mighty spirit rais’d,
  Since Heaven and Cato both are pleas’d—­

[The rest of the poem is lost.]

[Footnote 1:  Born Jan., 1616-17; died 1693.  For his life, see “Dictionary of National Biography.”—­W.  E. B.]

ODE TO THE HON.  SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE

WRITTEN AT MOOR-PARK IN JUNE 1689

I

Virtue, the greatest of all monarchies! 
      Till its first emperor, rebellious man,
    Deposed from off his seat,
  It fell, and broke with its own weight
Into small states and principalities,
    By many a petty lord possess’d,
But ne’er since seated in one single breast. 
      ’Tis you who must this land subdue,
      The mighty conquest’s left for you,
      The conquest and