I. 'T'S

'IS true, great name, thou art secure

From the forgetfulness and rage
Of death, or envy, or devouring age ;
Thou canst the force and teeth of time endure :
Thy. fame, like men, the elder it doth grow,

Will of itself turn whiter too,

Without what needless art can do ;
Will live beyond thy breath, beyond thy hearse,
Though it were never heard or fung in verse.

Without our help, thy memory is safe ;
They only want an epitaph,
That do remain alone

Alive in an inscription,
Remember'd only on the brass, or marble-stone,

'Tis

L 3

That the least grain of it,

If fully spread and beat,
Would many leaves and mighty volumes hold.

IV.
Before thy name was publish'd, and whilst yet

Thou only to thyself wert great,
Whilft yet the happy bud

Was not quite seen or understood,
It then fure signs of future greatness shew'd :

Then thy domestic worth
Did tell the world what it would be,

When it should fit occasion see,
When a full spring should call it forth :
As bodies in the dark and night
Have the same colours, the same red and white,

As in the open day and light ;

The sun doth only shew
That they are bright, not make them fo.
So whilft but private walls did know
What we to such a mighty mind should owe,

Then the same virtues did appear,
Though in a less and more contracted sphere,
As full, though not as large as since they were :
And, like

great

rivers' fountains, though
At first so deep thou didft not go :
Though then thine was not so enlarg'd a flood;
Yet when 'twas little, 'twas as clear, as good.

V.
Tis true thou was not born unto a crown,
Thy sceptre's not thy father's, but thy own :

Thy

a

Thy purple was not made at once in haste,
But after many other colours past,
It took the deepest princely dye at last.
Thou didst begin with lesser cares,
And private thoughts took up thy private years ::
Those hands which were ordain'd by fates
To change the world and alter states,

Practis'd at first that vast design
On meaner things with equal mien.
That soul which should so many sceptres sway,

To whom so many kingdoms should obey,
Learn'd first to rule in a domestic way :
So government itself began

From family, and single man,
Was by the small relation first

Of husband and of father nurs'd,
And from those less beginnings past,
To spread itself o'er all the world at last.

VI.
But when thy country (then almost enthrall’d)

Thy virtue and thy courage callid;
When England did thy arms intreat,
And 't had been sin in thee not to be great :

When every stream, and every flood,
Was a true vein of earth, and run with blood :

When unus'd arms, and unknown war,

Fill'd every place, and every ear ; When the great storms and dismal night

Did all the land affright ; 'Twas time for thee to bring forth all our light.

Thou

Thou left'st thy more delightful peace,

Thy private life and better case ;
Then down thy steel and armour took,
Wishing that it still hung upon the hook :
When death had got a large commission out,
Throwing the arrows and her sting about ;
Then thou (as once the healing serpent rose)
Was lifted up, not for thyself but us.

VII.
Thy country wounded was, and sick, before

Thy wars and arms did her restore :
Thou knew'st where the disease did lie,
And like the cure of sympathy,
The strong and certain remedy

Unto the weapon didit apply.;
Thou didst not draw the sword, and so

Away the fcabbard throw,
As if thy country shou'd

Be the inheritance of Mars and blood :
But that, when the great work was fpun,

War in itself should be undone :
That peace might land again upon the shore,

Richer and better than before :
The husbandmen no steel shall know,
None but the useful iron of the plow;
That bays might creep on every spear:
And though our sky was overspread

With a destructive red, 'Twas but till thou our sun didft in full light appear.

VIII.
When Ajax dy'd, the purple blood,
That from his gaping wound had flow'd,

Turn'd into letter, every leaf

Had on it wrote his epitaph:
So from that crimson flood,
Which thou by fate of times wert led

Unwillingly to shed,
Letters and learning rose, and arts renew'd :
Thou fought'st, not out of envy, hope, or hate,

But to refine the church and state ;
And like the Romans, whate'er thou

In the field of Mars didst mow,
Was, that a holy island hence might grow.
Thy wars, as rivers raised by a shower,
Which welcome clouds do pour,
Though they at first feem
To carry all away with an enraged stream ;

Yet did not happen that they might destroy,
Or the better parts annoy:
But all the filth and mud to scour,

And leave behind another sime,
To give a birth to a more happy power.

IX.
In fields unconquer'd, and so well

Thou didit in battles and in arms excel;
That steely arms themselves might be

Worn out in war as soon as thee;
Success so close upon thy troops did wait,
As if thou first hadît conquer'd fate ;

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