Like favour find the Irish, with like
fate
Advanc’d to be a portion of our
state:
While by your valour, and your bounteous
mind,
Nations, divided by the sea, are join’d.
Holland, to gain your friendship, is content
To be our out-guard on the continent:
She from her fellow-provinces wou’d
go,
Rather than hazard to have you her foe.
In our late fight, when cannons did diffuse
(Preventing posts) the terror and the
news;
Our neighbour princes trembled at their
roar:
But our conjunction makes them tremble
more.
Your never-failing sword made war to cease,
And now you heal us with the acts of peace
Our minds with bounty and with awe engage,
Invite affection, and restrain our rage.
Less pleasure take brave minds in battles
won,
Than in restoring such as are undone:
Tygers have courage, and the rugged bear,
But man alone can whom he conquers, spare.
To pardon willing; and to punish, loath;
You strike with one hand, but you heal
with both.
Lifting up all that prostrate lye, you
grieve
You cannot make the dead again to live.
When fate or error had our Age mis-led,
And o’er this nation such confusion
spread;
The only cure which cou’d from heav’n
come down,
Was so much pow’r and piety in one.
One whose extraction’s from an ancient
line,
Gives hope again that well-born men may
shine:
The meanest in your nature mild and good,
The noble rest secured in your blood.
Oft have we wonder’d, how you hid
in peace
A mind proportion’d to such things
as these;
How such a ruling sp’rit you cou’d
restrain,
And practise first over your self to reign.
Your private life did a just pattern give
How fathers, husbands, pious sons shou’d
live;
Born to command, your princely virtues
slept
Like humble David’s while the flock
he kept:
But when your troubled country call’d
you forth,
Your flaming courage, and your matchless
worth
Dazling the eyes of all that did pretend,
To fierce contention gave a prosp’rous
end.
Still as you rise, the state, exalted
too,
Finds no distemper while ’tis chang’d
by you;
Chang’d like the world’s great
scene, when without noise
The rising sun night’s vulgar lights
destroys.
Had you, some ages past, this race of
glory
Run, with amazement we shou’d read
your story;
But living virtue, all atchievements past,
Meets envy still to grapple with at last.
This Caesar found, and that ungrateful
age,
With losing him, went back to blood and
rage.
Mistaken Brutus thought to break their
yoke,
But cut the bond of union with that stroke.
That sun once set, a thousand meaner stars
Gave a dim light to violence and wars,
To such a tempest as now threatens all,
Did not your mighty arm prevent the fall.


