To tell You now what cares, what fears we past, What clouds of sorrow did the land o'er-cast, Were lost, but unto such as have been there, Where the absented Sun benights the year: Or have those countries travel'd, which ne'er feel The warmth and virtue of his flaming wheel. 10 How happy yet were we! that when You went, You left within Your Kingdom's firmament A Partner-light, whose lustre may despise The nightly glimm'ring tapers of the skies, Your peerless Queen; and at each hand a Star, 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. Heaven's greater lamps illumine it; each spark Adds only this, to make the sky less dark. 20 Nay, She, who is the glory of her sex, Did sadly droop for lack of Your reflex: Oft did She her fair brow in loneness shroud, And dimly shone, like Venus in a cloud. Now are those gloomy mists dry'd up by You, As the world's eye scatters the ev'ning dew: And You bring home that blessing to the land, Which absence made us rightly understand. Here may You henceforth stay! there need no charms To hold You, but the circle of her arms, 30 Whose fruitful love yields You a rich increase, Seals of Your joy, and of the kingdom's peace. O may those precious pledges fix You here, And You grow old within that crystal sphere! Pardon this bold detention. Else our love Will merely an officious trouble prove. Each busy minute tells us, as it flies, That there are better objects for Your eyes. To them let us leave You, whilst we go pray, Raising this triumph to a Holy-day. 40 And may that soul the Church's blessing want, May his content be short, his comforts scant, Whose bosom-altar does no incense burn, In thankful sacrifice for Your return. [_Upon the King's happy return, &c._] Hannah notes that this appears with variants, but signed, in MS. Ashm. 38, fol. 51. I have not thought it necessary to collate this version from a work described by good authorities as 'a bad MS.'. The piece itself, however, with others of King's, may well have been in Dryden's mind when he composed his own batch of Restoration welcome-poems to Charles II and Clarendon, within three or four years of the publication of these. There is no plagiarism: Heaven forbid that I should take part in plagiarism-hunting. But there is a sort of resemblance in form and tone (especially in the use of 'You' and 'Your' as pivots), and (though with great improvement) in versification.--The capital Y's here are almost complete in the original, and I have completed them.] _To the Queen at Oxford._