AN ELEGY, On the Most Lamented of Princes King CHARLES the Second, Our Late Sovereign of ever Blessed Memory.
⟨11. Feb. 1685/4.⟩
IF Sorrow's all we pay a Heaven-Crown'd Head,
The only Offering to the Royal Dead:
To Gracious
CHARLES, for all our Vast Arrears,
For almost Twenty Pardon'd Stiffneck't Years;
Oh! What does
England owe in Sighs and Tears.
Nor bound our Griefs to
Albion's narrow Shore:
All
Europe thy Great
Arbiter Deplore;
Whose Hand, the World's Great Scale of Empire bore.
Nor the Impoverish'd World alone shall weep
At
CHARLES's Obsequies; the Mighty Deep
For Dying
CHARLES, shall Solemn Mournings keep.
The Wailing
Tritons on the Ecchoing Main,
Who in Returning
CHARLES's Glorious Train,
Once with Shril Trumps did his Loud Triumphs play,
At His
Miraculous Restauration Day;
All Shouting as the Glittering Monarch Rode,
Neptunes more Young, but Greater Rival God;
Now throw their useless Untun'd Shells away;
And with those Tears, that Funeral Duty pay,
Shall add New Brine to the o reflowing Sea.
And the Proud Waves which the Great Heroe bore,
Rowl Heavily along the
Albion Shore,
And bear the Mournful Sound the Travel'd Ocean o're.
Bright Saint Farewell, in whom all Virtues shone
So God-like Great, that Thou Blest
CHARLES alone,
Hast for lost
Britain more from Heaven obtain'd,
Then Pious
Lot for the Curst
Sodom gain'd.
Midst all the hovering Plagues our Crimes persue
For thy Great
Sire's still Crying
Murder due;
Thou
CHARLES our kind Propitiator stood,
A Prince so Gracious, so Divinely Good,
Thy Mercy even Aton'd thy Fathers Blood.
Thy Death were too Severe a Stroke of Fate,
Did not Surviving
JAMES the Edge rebate:
Thy Darling
JAMES, thy Dearest Half before,
Now thy Great ALL: For though thy Courser Oare
In Dust must Sleep; Thy Brighter Virtues still
In our New
CAESAR their Old Orbe shall fill:
Whilst a Bright Spark of thy Celestial Fire,
Full of thy Mighty Self shall His Great Soul inspire.
When Future Times Great
CHARLES shall take Review,
Of thy Bright Fames Immortal Volumes through;
Thy Birth, thy Fate, thy Life, thy Acts, thy Reign,
All wond'rous Links of one continued Chain;
Are Truths succeeding Ages shall receive,
Amaz'd to hear, and staggering to believe:
To see the Changing Revolutions move
By the Almighty Guiding Hand above:
Here to behold the Royal
FATHER Bleed!
Oh Execrable Wound! Infernal Deed.
Of which all Story shall a Paralel want,
And Hell a Pencil black enough to Paint.
Like Old
Jerusalems Prodigious Day,
See Darkness spread, and scatter'd Lightnings Play;
Hell Yawning, and Religion, Government,
Church, Crown, all like the
unveyl'd Temple Rent:
Whilst the Graves ope'd and all the Loyal Dead,
In
CHARLES His Cause, in Honours Noblest Bed,
Rouz'd up to see that Stroke of Horrour given,
That Rob'd a Rebel World, to enrich Heaven.
Here change the
Scene and see the
SON Restor'd:
A thousand bended Necks to mount their Lord.
Hear the loud Joys and
Hallelujahs Sound,
And view the Host of Glittering Guards all round.
Ten Thousand Angels in the Van appear,
And three Adoring Kingdoms fill the Reer.
Where such strange Turns the wond'rous
Machins Play,
There such black Night, and here such dazling Day:
Heaven, Mighty
CHARLES, did in thy Race Decree
To draw the Portrait of the Deity.
The Fathers Fall with the Sons Glory joyn'd,
Sure even in Thee, the Mystick
Shilo Shin'd;
His
Cross thy
Sires, His
Resurrection Thine:
Original None more Bright, No
Copy more Divine.
FINIS
LONDON, Printed By Elizabeth Mallet 1685.