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To The Lord Chancellor Hyde.[1]

by John Dryden

Presented On New Year's Day, 1662.

My Lord,

While flattering crowds officiously appear

To give themselves, not you, a happy year;

And by the greatness of their presents prove

How much they hope, but not how well they love;

The Muses, who your early courtship boast,

Though now your flames are with their beauty lost,

Yet watch their time, that, if you have forgot

They were your mistresses, the world may not:

Decay'd by time and wars, they only prove

Their former beauty by your former love;

And now present, as ancient ladies do,

That, courted long, at length are forced to woo.

For still they look on you with such kind eyes,

As those that see the church's sovereign rise;

From their own order chose, in whose high state,

They think themselves the second choice of fate.

When our great monarch into exile went,

Wit and religion suffer'd banishment.

Thus once, when Troy was wrapp'd in fire and smoke,

The helpless gods their burning shrines forsook;

They with the vanquish'd prince and party go,

And leave their temples empty to the foe.

At length the Muses stand, restored again

To that great charge which Nature did ordain;

And their loved Druids seem revived by fate,

While you dispense the laws, and guide the state.

The nation's soul, our monarch, does dispense,

Through you, to us his vital influence:

You are the channel where those spirits flow,

And work them higher, as to us they go.

In open prospect nothing bounds our eye,

Until the earth seems join'd unto the sky:

So, in this hemisphere, our utmost view

Is only bounded by our king and you:

Our sight is limited where you are join'd,

And beyond that no farther heaven can find.

So well your virtues do with his agree,

That, though your orbs of different greatness be,

Yet both are for each other's use disposed,

His to enclose, and yours to be enclosed.

Nor could another in your room have been,

Except an emptiness had come between.

Well may he then to you his cares impart,

And share his burden where he shares his heart.

In you his sleep still wakes; his pleasures find

Their share of business in your labouring mind.

So when the weary sun his place resigns,

He leaves his light, and by reflection shines.

Justice, that sits and frowns where public laws

Exclude soft mercy from a private cause,

In your tribunal most herself does please;

There only smiles because she lives at ease;

And, like young David, finds her strength the more,

When disencumber'd from those arms she wore.

Heaven would our royal master should exceed

Most in that virtue which we most did need;

And his mild father (who too late did find

All mercy vain but what with power was join'd)

His fatal goodness left to fitter times,

Not to increase, but to absolve, our crimes:

But when the heir of this vast treasure knew

How large a legacy was left to you

(Too great for any subject to retain),

He wisely tied it to the crown again:

Yet, passing through your hands, it gathers more,

As streams, through mines, bear tincture of their ore.

While empiric politicians use deceit,

Hide what they give, and cure but by a cheat;

You boldly show that skill which they pretend,

And work by means as noble as your end:

Which should you veil, we might unwind the clew,

As men do nature, till we came to you.

And as the Indies were not found, before

Those rich perfumes, which, from the happy shore,

The winds upon their balmy wings convey'd,

Whose guilty sweetness first their world betray'd;

So by your counsels we are brought to view

A rich and undiscover'd world in you.

By you our monarch does that fame assure,

Which kings must have, or cannot live secure:

For prosperous princes gain their subjects' heart,

Who love that praise in which themselves have part.

By you he fits those subjects to obey,

As heaven's eternal Monarch does convey

His power unseen, and man to his designs,

By his bright ministers the stars, inclines.

Our setting sun, from his declining seat,

Shot beams of kindness on you, not of heat:

And, when his love was bounded in a few

That were unhappy that they might be true,

Made you the favourite of his last sad times,

That is a sufferer in his subjects' crimes:

Thus those first favours you received, were sent,

Like heaven's rewards in earthly punishment.

Yet fortune, conscious of your destiny,

Even then took care to lay you softly by;

And wrapp'd your fate among her precious things,

Kept fresh to be unfolded with your king's.

Shown all at once, you dazzled so our eyes,

As new born Pallas did the gods surprise,

When, springing forth from Jove's new-closing wound,

She struck the warlike spear into the ground;

Which sprouting leaves did suddenly enclose,

And peaceful olives shaded as they rose.

How strangely active are the arts of peace,

Whose restless motions less than war's do cease!

Peace is not freed from labour but from noise;

And war more force, but not more pains employs;

Such is the mighty swiftness of your mind,

That, like the earth, it leaves our sense behind;

While you so smoothly turn and roll our sphere,

That rapid motion does but rest appear.

For, as in nature's swiftness, with the throng

Of flying orbs while ours is borne along,

All seems at rest to the deluded eye,

Moved by the soul of the same harmony,--

So, carried on by your unwearied care,

We rest in peace, and yet in motion share.

Let envy then those crimes within you see,

From which the happy never must be free;

Envy, that does with misery reside,

The joy and the revenge of ruin'd pride.

Think it not hard, if at so cheap a rate

You can secure the constancy of fate,

Whose kindness sent what does their malice seem,

By lesser ills the greater to redeem.

Nor can we this weak shower a tempest call,

But drops of heat, that in the sunshine fall.

You have already wearied fortune so,

She cannot further be your friend or foe;

But sits all breathless, and admires to feel

A fate so weighty, that it stops her wheel.

In all things else above our humble fate,

Your equal mind yet swells not into state,

But, like some mountain in those happy isles,

Where in perpetual spring young nature smiles,

Your greatness shows: no horror to affright,

But trees for shade, and flowers to court the sight:

Sometimes the hill submits itself a while

In small descents, which do its height beguile:

And sometimes mounts, but so as billows play,

Whose rise not hinders, but makes short our way.

Your brow, which does no fear of thunder know,

Sees rolling tempests vainly beat below;

And, like Olympus' top, the impression wears

Of love and friendship writ in former years.

Yet, unimpair'd with labours, or with time,

Your age but seems to a new youth to climb.

Thus heavenly bodies do our time beget,

And measure change, but share no part of it.

And still it shall without a weight increase,

Like this new year, whose motions never cease.

For since the glorious course you have begun

Is led by Charles, as that is by the sun,

It must both weightless and immortal prove,

Because the centre of it is above.