pois’nous weeds,
   And every stinking weed so lofty grows,
   As if ’twould overshade the Royal Rose;
   The Royal Rose, the glory of our morn,
      But, ah! too much without a thorn.

VI

Forgive (original mildness) this ill-govern’d zeal,
’Tis all the angry slighted Muse can do
     In the pollution of these days;
  No province now is left her but to rail,
  And poetry has lost the art to praise,
     Alas, the occasions are so few: 
     None e’er but you,
     And your Almighty Master, knew
  With heavenly peace of mind to bear
(Free from our tyrant passions, anger, scorn, or fear)
The giddy turns of popular rage,
And all the contradictions of a poison’d age;
  The Son of God pronounced by the same breath
    Which straight pronounced his death;
  And though I should but ill be understood,
  In wholly equalling our sin and theirs,
  And measuring by the scanty thread of wit
  What we call holy, and great, and just, and good,
(Methods in talk whereof our pride and ignorance make use,)
  And which our wild ambition foolishly compares
    With endless and with infinite;
  Yet pardon, native Albion, when I say,
Among thy stubborn sons there haunts that spirit of the Jews,
  That those forsaken wretches who to-day
    Revile his great ambassador,
  Seem to discover what they would have done
  (Were his humanity on earth once more)
To his undoubted Master, Heaven’s Almighty Son.

VII

But zeal is weak and ignorant, though wondrous proud,
  Though very turbulent and very loud;
    The crazy composition shows,
Like that fantastic medley in the idol’s toes,
  Made up of iron mixt with clay,
  This crumbles into dust,
  That moulders into rust,
  Or melts by the first shower away. 
Nothing is fix’d that mortals see or know,
Unless, perhaps, some stars above be so;
    And those, alas, do show,
  Like all transcendent excellence below;
    In both, false mediums cheat our sight,
And far exalted objects lessen by their height: 
    Thus primitive Sancroft moves too high
    To be observed by vulgar eye,
    And rolls the silent year
    On his own secret regular sphere,
And sheds, though all unseen, his sacred influence here.

VIII

Kind star, still may’st thou shed thy sacred influence here,
  Or from thy private peaceful orb appear;
  For, sure, we want some guide from Heaven, to show
  The way which every wand’ring fool below
    Pretends so perfectly to know;
  And which, for aught I see, and much I fear,
     The world has wholly miss’d;
  I mean the way which leads to Christ: 
Mistaken idiots! see how giddily they run,