Would curb my spirit and restrain my hands:
The people might assert their liberty;
But what was right in them were crime in me.
His favour leaves me nothing to require,
Prevents my wishes, and out-runs desire;
What more can I expect while David lives?
All but his kingly diadem he gives:
Why should I then repine at Heaven's decree,
Which gives me no pretence to royalty?
Yet, oh that fate, propitiously inclined,
Had raised my birth, or had debased my mind;
To my large soul not all her treasure lent,
And then betray'd it to a mean descent!
I find, I find my mounting spirits bold,
And David's part disdains my mother's mould.
Why am I scanted by a niggard birth?
My soul disclaims the kindred of her earth;
And, made for empire, whispers me within,
Desire of greatness is a godlike sin.'

CHARACTER OF BUCKINGHAM.

Some of their chiefs were princes of the land;
In the first rank of these did Zimri stand;
A man so various, that he seem'd to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome:
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong;
Was everything by starts, and nothing long;
But, in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon:
Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking,
Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking
Blest madman, who could every hour employ,
With something new to wish, or to enjoy!
Railing and praising were his usual themes;
And both, to show his judgment, in extremes:
So over-violent, or over-civil,

That every man with him was God or Devil.
In squandering wealth was his peculiar art;
Nothing went unrewarded but desert.

Beggar'd by fools, whom still he found too late;
Ile had his jest, and they had his estate.
He laugh'd himself from court, then sought relief
By forming parties, but could ne'er be chief:

For, spite of him, the weight of business fell
On Absalom, and wise Achitophel:

Thus, wicked but in will, of means bereft,
He left no faction, but of that was left.

RELIGIO LAICI.

DIM as the borrow'd beams of moon and stars
To lonely, weary, wandering travellers,
Is Reason to the soul: and as on high,
Those rolling fires discover but the sky,
Not light us here; so Reason's glimmering ray
Was lent, not to assure our doubtful way,
But guide us upward to a better day.
And as those nightly tapers disappear,
When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere;
So pale grows Reason at Religion's sight;
So dies, and so dissolves in supernatural light.
Some few, whose lamp shone brighter, have been led
From cause to cause, to nature's secret head ·
And found that one first principle must be
But what, or who, that UNIVERSAL HE;
Whether some soul incompassing this ball,
Unmade, unmoved; yet making, moving all;
Or various atoms' interfering dance

Leap'd into form, the noble work of chance;
Or this great all was from eternity;
Not even the Stagirite himself could see:
And Epicurus guess'd as well as he.
As blindly groped they for a future state;
As rashly judged of providence and fate:
But least of all could their endeavours find
What most concern'd the good of human kind;
For happiness was never to be found,
But vanish'd from 'em like enchanted ground.
One thought Content the good to be enjoy'd;
This every little accident destroy'd:

The wiser madmen did for Virtue toil,

A thorny or at best a barren soil:

In Pleasure some their glutton souls would steep, But found their line too short, the well too deep; And leaky vessels which no bless could keep. Thus anxious thoughts in endless circles roll,

Without a centre where to fix the soul:

In this wild maze their vain endeavours end:
How can the less the greater comprehend?
Or finite reason reach Infinity?

For what could fathom God, were more than He.

FROM "THE HIND AND PANTHER."

A MILK-WHITE Hind, immortal and unchanged,
Fed on the lawns, and in the forest ranged;
Without unspotted, innocent within,

She fear'd no danger, for she knew no sin.
Yet had she oft been chased with horns and hounds,
And Scythian shafts and many winged wounds
Aim'd at her heart, was often forced to fly,
And doom'd to death though fated not to die.
Panting and pensive now she ranged alone,
And wander'd in the kingdoms, once her own.
The common hunt, though from their rage restrain'd
By sovereign power, her company disdain'd;
Grinn'd as they pass'd, and with a glaring eye
Gave gloomy signs of secret enmity.

'Tis true she bounded by, and tripp'd so light,
They had not time to take a steady sight.
For truth has such a face and such a mien,
As to be loved needs only to be seen.

The Panther, sure the noblest, next the Hind,
And fairest creature of the spotted kind;
Oh, could her in-born stains be wash’d away,
She were too good to be a beast of prey!
How can I praise, or blame, and not offend,
Or how divide the frailty from the friend?
Her faults and virtues lie so mix'd, that she
Nor wholly stands condemn'd, nor wholly free.
Then, like her injured Lion, let me speak;
He cannot bend her, and he would not break.
Unkind already, and estranged in part,
The Wolf begins to share her wandering heart:
Though unpolluted yet with actual ill,
She half commits, who sins but in her will.
If, as our dreaming Platonists report,
There could be spirits of a middle sort,

Too black for heaven, and yet too white for hell,

Who just dropp'd half-way down, nor lower fell;
So poised, so gently she descends from high,
It seems a soft dismission from the sky.
Her house not ancient, whatsoe'er pretence
Her clergy heralds make in her defence;
A second century not half-way run,
Since the new honours of her blood begun.

ODE TO THE MEMORY OF MRS ANNE
KILLIGREW.

THOU youngest virgin-daughter of the skies
Made in the last promotion of the blest;
Whose palms, new plucked from paradise,
In spreading branches more sublimely rise,
Rich with immortal green above the rest :
Whether, adopted to some neighbouring star,
Thou roll'st above us, in thy wand'ring race,
Or, in procession fixed and regular,
Mov'st with the heaven-majestic pace;
Or, called to more superior bliss,

Thou tread'st, with seraphims, the vast abyss:
Whatever happy region is thy place,
Cease thy celestial song a little space;

Thou wilt have time enough for hymns divine,
Since heaven's eternal year is thine.

Hear, then, a mortal Muse thy praise rehearse,
In no ignoble verse;

But such as thine own voice did practise here,
When thy first fruits of poesy were given;
To make thyself a welcome inmate there :
While yet a young probationer,
And candidate of heaven.

If by traduction came thy mind,
Our wonder is the less to find

A soul so charming from a stock so good;
Thy father was transfused into thy blood:
So wert thou born into a tuneful strain,
An early, rich, and inexhausted vein.
But if thy pre-existing soul

Was formed at first with myriads more,
It did through all the mighty poets roll,
Who Greek or Latin laurels wore.

And was that Sappho last, which once it was before. If so, then cease thy flight, O heaven-born mind! Thou hast no dross to purge from thy rich ore: Nor can thy soul a fairer mansion find

Than was the beauteous frame she left behind. Return to fill or mend the choir of thy celestial kind.

O gracious God! how far have we
Profaned thy heav'nly gift of poesy?
Made prostitute and profligate the Muse,
Debased to each obscene and impious use,
Whose harmony was first ordained above
For tongues of angels, and for hymns of love!
O wretched we! why were we hurried down
This lubrique and adulterate age--

Nay, added fat pollutions of our own--
T' increase the steaming ordures of the stage?
What can we say t' excuse our second fall!
Let this thy vestal, heaven, atone for all;
Her Arethusian stream remains unsoiled,
Unmixed with foreign filth, and undefiled;
Her wit was more than man; her innocence a child.

When in mid-air the golden trump shall sound,
To raise the nations under ground;
When in the valley of Jehoshaphat,

The judging God shall close the book of fate;
And there the last assizes keep

For those who wake, and those who sleep;
The sacred poets first shall hear the sound,

And foremost from the tomb shall bound, For they are covered with the lightest ground; And straight, with inborn vigour, on the wing, Like mountain larks, to the new morning sing. There thou, sweet saint, before the choir shall go, As harbinger of heaven, the way to show, The way which thou so well hast learnt below.

ALEXANDER'S FEAST.

'Twas at the royal feast, for Persia won,
By Philip's warlike son:

Aloft in awful state