A salutation of his Majesties Ship the Soveraign
Move on thou floating Trophee built to fame!
And bid her trump spread thy Majestick name;
That the blew Tritons, and those petty Gods
Which sport themselves upon the dancing floods,
May bow as to their Neptune, when they feel
The awful pressure of thy potent keel.
Great wonder of the time! whose form unites,
In one aspect two warring opposites,
Delight and horrour; and in them portends
Diff'ring events both to thy foes and friends:
To these thy radiant brow, Peaces bright Shrine,
Doth like that golden Constellation shine,
Which guides the Sea man with auspicious beams,
Safe and unshipwrackt through the troubled streams.
But, as a blazing Meteor, to those
It doth ostents of blood and death disclose.
For thy rich Decks lighten like Heavens fires,
To usher forth the thunder of thy Tires.
O never may cross wind, or swelling wave
Conspire to make the treach'rous sands thy grave:
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poem by Henry King
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The Surrender
MY once dear love, hapless that I no more
Must call thee so, the rich affection's store
That fed our hope lies now exhaust and spent,
Like sums of treasure unto bankrupts lent.
We, that did nothing study but the way
To love each other, with which thoughts the day
Rose with delight to us and with them set,
Must learn the hateful art, how to forget.
We that did nothing wish that Heaven would give
Beyond ourselves, nor did desire to live
Beyond that wish, all these now cancel must
As if not writ in faith, but words and dust.
Yet witness those clear vows which lovers make,
Witness the chaste desires that never brake
Into unruly heats; witness that breast
Which in thy bosom anchor'd his whole rest;
'Tis no default in us: I dare acquite
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poem by Henry King
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On the Earl of Essex
Essex twice made unhappy by a Wife,
Yet Marry'd worse unto the Peoples strife:
He who by two Divorces did untie
His Bond of Wedlock and of Loyalty:
Who was by Easiness of Nature bred,
To lead that Tumult which first Him misled;
Yet had some glimm'ring Sparks of Virtue lent
To see (though late) his Errour, and Repent:
Essex lies here, like an inverted Flame,
Hid in the Ruins of his House and Name;
And as He, frailties sad Example, lies,
Warns the Survivours in his Exequies.
He shews what wretched bubbles Great Men are,
Through their Ambition grown too Popular:
For they Built up, from weak Opinion, stand
On Bases false as Water, loose as Sand;
Essex in differing Successes try'd
The fury and the falshood of each Side;
Now with applauses Deify'd, and then
Thrown down with spightfull infamy agen:
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poem by Henry King
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The Labyrinth
Life is a crooked Labyrinth, and we
Are daily lost in that Obliquity.
'Tis a perplexed circle, in whose round
Nothing but sorrows and new sins abound.
How is the faint impression of each good
Drown'd in the vicious Channel of our blood?
Whose Ebbes and tides by their vicissitude
Both our great Maker and our selves delude.
O wherefore is the most discerning eye
Unapt to make its own discovery?
Why is the clearest and best judging mind
In her own ills prevention dark and blind?
Dull to advise, to act precipitate,
We scarce think what to do but when too late.
Or if we think, that fluid thought, like seed
Rots there to propagate some fouler deed.
Still we repent and sin, sin and repent;
We thaw and freeze, we harden and relent.
Those fires which cool'd to day the morrows heat
Rekindles. Thus frail nature does repeat
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poem by Henry King
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AN ELEGY Upon Mrs. Kirk unfortunately drowned in Thames
For all the Ship-wracks, and the liquid graves
Lost men have gain'd within the furrow'd waves,
The Sea hath fin'd and for our wrongs paid use,
When its wrought foam a Venus did produce.
But what repair wilt thou unhappy Thames
Afford our losse? thy dull unactive streames
Can no new beauty raise, nor yet restore
Her who by thee was ravisht from our shore:
Whose death hath stain'd the glory of thy flood,
And mixt the guilty Channel with her blood.
O Neptune! was thy favour onely writ
In that loose Element where thou dost sit?
That after all this time thou should'st repent
Thy fairest blessing to the Continent?
Say, what could urge this Fate? is Thetis dead,
Or Amphitrite from thy wet armes fled?
Was't thou so poor in Nymphs, that thy moist love
Must be maintain'd with pensions from above?
If none of these, but that whil'st thou did'st sleep
Upon thy sandy pillow in the deep,
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poem by Henry King
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Madam Gabrina, Or the Ill-favourd Choice
Con mala Muger el remedio
Mucha Tierra por el medio.
I have oft wondred why thou didst elect
Thy Mistress of a stuff none could affect,
That wore his eyes in the right place. A thing
Made up, when Natures powers lay slumbering.
One, where all pregnant imperfections met
To make her sexes scandal: Teeth of jet,
Hair dy'd in Orpment, from whose fretful hew
Canidia her highest Witch-crafts drew.
A lip most thin and pale, but such a mouth
Which like the Poles is stretched North and South.
A face so colour'd, and of such a form,
As might defiance bid unto a storm:
And the complexion of her sallow hide
Like a wrack't body washt up by the Tyde:
Eyes small: a nose so to her vizard glew'd
As if 'twould take a Planets altitude.
Last for her breath, 'tis somewhat like the smell
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poem by Henry King
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Upon the Kings happy return from Scotland
So breaks the day when the returning Sun
Hath newly through his Winter Tropick run,
As You (Great Sir!) in this regress come forth
From the remoter Climate of the North.
To tell You now what cares, what fears we past,
What Clouds of sorrow did the land ore-cast,
Were lost, but unto such as have been there
Where the absented Sun benights the year:
Or have those Countreys traveld which nere feel
The warmth and vertue of his flaming wheel.
How happy yet were we! that when you went,
You left within your Kingdomes firmament
A Partner-Light, whose lustre may despise
The nightly glimm'ring Tapers of the skies,
Your peerless Queen; and at each hand a Starre
Whose hopeful beams from You enkindled are.
Though (to say truth) the light which they could bring
Serv'd but to lengthen out our evening.
Heavens greater lamps illumine it; each spark
Adds onely this, to make the sky less dark.
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poem by Henry King
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AN ELEGY Occasioned by the losse of the most incomparable Lady Stanhope, daughter to the Earl of Northumberland
Lightned by that dimme Torch our sorrow bears
We sadly trace thy Coffin with our tears;
And though the Ceremonious Rites are past
Since thy fair body into earth was cast;
Though all thy Hatchments into ragges are torne,
Thy Funerall Robes and Ornaments outworn;
We still thy mourners without Shew or Art,
With solemn Blacks hung round about our heart,
Thus constantly the Obsequies renew
Which to thy precious memory are due.
Yet think not that we rudely would invade
The dark recess of thine untroubled shade,
Or give disturbance to that happy peace
Which thou enjoy'st at full since thy release;
Much less in sullen murmurs do complain
Of His decree who took thee back again,
And did e're Fame had spread thy vertues light,
Eclipse and fold thee up in endless night.
This like an act of envy not of grief
Might doubt thy bliss, and shake our own belief,
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poem by Henry King
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To the Queen at Oxford
Great Lady! That thus quite against our use,
We speak your welcome by an English Muse,
And in a vulgar tongue our zeales contrive,
Is to confess your large prerogative,
Who have the pow'rful freedom to dispense
With our strict Rules, or Customes difference.
Tis fit when such a Star deigns to appeare
And shine within the Academick Spheare,
That ev'ry Colledge grac't by your resort,
Should onely speak the language of your Court;
As if Apollo's learned Quire, but You
No other Queen of the Ascendent knew.
Let those that list invoke the Delphian name,
To light their verse, and quench their doting flame;
In Helicon it were High Treason now,
Did any to a feign'd Minerva bow;
When You are present, whose chast vertues stain
The vaunted glories of her Maiden brain.
I would not flatter. May that dyet feed
Deform'd and vicious soules: they onely need
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poem by Henry King
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An Acknowledgment
My best of friends! what needs a chain to tie
One by your merit bound a Votarie?
Think you I have some plot upon my peace,
I would this bondage change for a release?
Since 'twas my fate your prisoner to be,
Heav'n knows I nothing fear but libertie.
Yet you do well that study to prevent,
After so rich a stock of favour spent
On one so worthless, lest my memory
Should let so dear an obligation dy
Without Record. This made my precious Friend
Her Token, as an Antidote to send
Against forgetful poysons. That as they
Who Vespers late, and early Mattins say
Upon their Beads, so on this linked skore
In golden numbers I might reckon ore
Your vertues and my debt, which does surmount
The trivial laws of Popular account:
For that within this emblematick knot
Your beauteous mind, and my own fate is wrote.
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poem by Henry King
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