BY

COOPER'S HILL.

SURE there are poets which did never dream
Upon Parnassus, nor did taste the stream
Of Helicon; we therefore may suppose
Those made not poets, but the poets those.

And as courts make not kings, but kings the court,

So where the Muses and their train resort,
Parnassus stands; if I can be to thee

A poet, thou Parnassus art to me.
Nor wonder, if (advantag'd in my flight,
By taking wing from thy auspicious height)
Through untrac'd ways and airy paths I fly,
More boundless in my fancy than my eye:
My eye, which swift as thought contracts the

Or zeal more fierce than they, thy fall conspire,
Secure, whilst thee the best of poets sings,
Preserv'd from ruin by the best of kings.
Under his proud survey the city lies,
And like a mist beneath a hill doth rise;

While luxury, and wealth, like war and peace,
Are each the other's ruin, and increase.
As rivers lost in seas, some secret vein
Thence reconveys, there to be lost again.
Oh happiness of sweet retir'd content!
To be at once secure, and innocent.
Windsor the next (where Mars with Venus,
dwells,

Beauty with strength) above the valley swells
Into my eye, and doth itself present
With such an easy and unforc'd ascent,
That no stupendous precipice denies
Access, no horrour turns away our eyes:
But such a rise as doth at once invite
A pleasure, and a reverence from the sight.
Thy mighty master's emblem, in whose face
Sate meekness, heighten'd with majestic grace;
Such seems thy gentle height, made only proud
To be the basis of that pompous load,

Than which, a nobler weight no mountain

bears,

But Atlas only which supports the spheres. When Nature's hand this ground did thus ad

vance,

'Twas guided by a wiser power than Chance ;
Mark'd-out for such an use, as if 'twere meant
T'invite the builder, and his choice prevent.
Nor can we call it choice, when what we chuse,
Folly or blindness only could refuse.

A crown of such majestic towers doth grace
The gods' great mother, when her heavenly

race

Do homage to her, yet she cannot boast

crowd,

Seems at this distance but a darker cloud:

And is, to him who rightly things esteems,

No other in effect than what it seems:

they run,

Some to undo, and some to be undone;

1 Mr. Waller.

The British Arthur, or the Danish Cnute, (Though this of old no less contest did move, Than when for Homer's birth seven cities

strove)

fame,

As thine his fate, if mine had been his flame)
But whosoe'er it was, Nature design'd
First a brave place, and then as brave a mind.
Not to recount those several kings, to whom
It gave a cradle, or to whom a tomb;

But thee great Edward2, and thy greater son,
(The lilies which his father wore, he won)
And thy Bellona3, who the consort came
Not only to thy bed, but to thy fame,
She to the triumph led one captive 4 king

And brought that son, which did the second bring.

Then didst thou found that Order (whether love
Or victory thy royal thoughts did move):
Each was a noble cause, and nothing less
Than the design, has been the great success:
Which foreign kings and emperors esteem
The second honour to their diadem.
Had thy great Destiny but given thee skill
To know, as well as power to act her will,
That from those kings, who then thy captives
were,

In after-times should spring a royal pair,
Who should possess all that thy mighty power,
Or thy desires more mighty, did devour:
To whom their better fate reserves whate'er
The victor hopes for, or the vanquish'd fear;
That blood, which thou and thy great grand-

sire shed,

And all that since these sister nations bled,
Had been unspilt, and happy Edward known
That all the blood he spilt, had been his own.
When he that patron chose, in whom are join'd
Soldier and martyr, and his arms confin'd
Within th⚫ zure circle, he did seem
But to foretel, and prophecy of him.
Who to his realms that azure round bath join'd,
Which Nature for their bound at first design'd.
That bound which to the world's extremest
ends,

Endless itself, its liquid arms extends.
Nor doth he need those emblems which we paint,
But is himself the soldier and the saint.
Here should my wonder dwell, and here my
praise,

But my fix'd thoughts my wandering eye betrays,

Viewing a neighbouring hill, whose top of late
A chapel crown'd till in the common fate
Th' adjoining abbey fell: (may no such storm
Fall on our times, where ruin must reform !)
Tell me, my Muse, what monstrous dire of-
fence,

What crime could any Christian king incense
To such a rage? Was't luxury, or lust!
Was he so temperate, so chaste, so just ?
Were these their crimes? They were his own
much more:

But wealth is crime enough to him that's poor;
Who, having spent the treasures of his crown,
Condemns their luxury to feed his own.
And yet this act, to varnish o'er the shame
Of sacrilege, must bear Devotion's name.

2 Edward III. and the Black Prince.

3 Queen Philippa.

The kings of France and Scotland.

A real, or at least a seeming good:
Who fears not to do ill, yet fears the name,
And free from conscience, is a slave to fame :
Thus he the church at once protects, and spoils :
But princes' swords are sharper than their
styles.

And thus to th' ages past he makes amends,
Their charity destroys, their faith defends.
Then did Religion in a lazy cell,

In empty, airy contemplations dwell;
And like the block, unmoved lay: but ours,
As much too active, like the stork devours.
Is there no temperate region can be known,
Betwixt their frigid, and our torrid zone?
Could we not wake from that lethargic dream,
But to be restless in a worse extreme?
And for that lethargy was there no cure,
But to be cast into a calenture?

Can knowledge have no bound, but must advance
So far, to make us wish for ignorance;
And rather in the dark to grope our way,
Than led by a false guide to err by day?
Who sees these dismal heaps, but would demand
What barbarous invader sack'd the land?
But when he hears, no Goth, no Turk did bring,
This desolation, but a Christian king;
When nothing, but the name of zeal, appears
"Twixt our best actions and the worst of theirs :
What does he think our sacrilege would spare,
When such th' effects of our devotions are?

Parting from thence 'twixt anger, shame, and

fear,

Whose foam is amber, and their gravel gold;
His genuine and less guilty wealth t' explore,
Search not his bottom, but survey his shore;
O'er which he kindly spread his spacious wing,
And hatches plenty for th' ensuing spring.
Nor then destroys it with too fond a stay,
Like mothers which their infants overlay;
Nor with a sudden and impetuous wave,
Like profuse kings, resumes the wealth he gave,
No unexpected inundations spoil

The mower's hopes, nor mock the plowman's toil:

But god-like his unweary'd bounty flows;
First loves to do, then loves the good he does.
Nor are his blessings to his banks confin'd,
But free, and common, as the sea of wind;
When he, to boast or to disperse his stores,
Full of the tributes of his grateful shores,
Visits the world, and in his flying towers
Brings home to us, and makes both Indies ours:
Finds wealth where 'tis, bestows it where it wants,
Cities in deserts, woods in cities plants.

So that to us no thing, no place is strange,
While his fair bosom is the world's exchange.

O could I flow like thee, and make thy streams
My great example, as it is my theme!