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SONGS, ODES, AND A MASQUE

  I.

  THE FAIR STRANGER.[41]

    A SONG.

   1 Happy and free, securely blest,
     No beauty could disturb my rest;
     My amorous heart was in despair,
     To find a new victorious fair.

   2 Till you descending on our plains,
     With foreign force renew my chains: 
     Where now you rule without control
     The mighty sovereign of my soul.

   3 Your smiles have more of conquering charms,
     Than all your native country arms;
     Their troops we can expel with ease,
     Who vanquish only when we please.

   4 But in your eyes, oh! there’s the spell,
     Who can see them, and not rebel? 
     You make us captives by your stay,
     Yet kill us if you go away.

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FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 41:  This song is a compliment to the Duchess of Portsmouth, Charles’s mistress, on her first coming to England.]

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II

ON THE YOUNG STATESMEN.

WRITTEN IN 1680.

   1 CLARENDON had law and sense,
       Clifford was fierce and brave;
     Bennet’s grave look was a pretence,
     And Danby’s matchless impudence
       Help’d to support the knave.

   2 But Sunderland, Godolphin, Lory[42],
     These will appear such chits in story,
       ’Twill turn all politics to jests,
     To be repeated like John Dory,
       When fiddlers sing at feasts.

   3 Protect us, mighty Providence! 
       What would these madmen have? 
     First, they would bribe us without pence,
     Deceive us without common sense,
       And without power enslave.

   4 Shall free-torn men, in humble awe,
       Submit to servile shame;
     Who from consent and custom draw
     The same right to be ruled by law,
       Which kings pretend to reign?

   5 The duke shall wield his conquering sword,
       The chancellor make a speech,
     The king shall pass his honest word,
     The pawn’d revenue sums afford,
       And then, come kiss my breech.

   6 So have I seen a king on chess
       (His rooks and knights withdrawn,
     His queen and bishops in distress)
     Shifting about, grow less and less,
       With here and there a pawn.

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FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 42:  ‘Laurence Hyde,’ afterwards Earl of Rochester, is the person here called Lory.]

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III.