Britain! the mighty Ocean's lovely bride! 1 Now stretch thy self, fair isle, and grow: spread wide Thy bosome, and make roome. Thou art opprest With thine own glories, and art strangely blest Beyond thy self: for (lo!) the gods, the gods 5 Come fast upon thee; and those glorious ods Swell thy full honours to a pitch so high As sits above thy best capacitie. Are they not ods? and glorious? that to thee Those mighty genii throng, which well might be 10 Each one an Age's labour? that thy dayes Are gilded with the union of those rayes Whose each divided beam would be a sunne To glad the sphere of any Nation? Sure, if for these thou mean'st to find a seat, 15 Th' hast need, O Britain, to be truly Great. And so thou art; their presence makes thee so: They are thy greatnesse. Gods, where-e're they go, Bring their Heav'n with them: their great footsteps place An everlasting smile upon the face 20 Of the glad Earth they tread on: while with thee Those beames that ampliate mortalitie, And teach it to expatiate and swell To majestie and fulnesse, deign to dwell, Thou by thy self maist sit, (blest Isle) and see 25 How thy great mother Nature dotes on thee. Thee therefore from the rest apart she hurl'd, And seem'd to make an Isle, but made a World. Time yet hath dropt few plumes since Hope turn'd Joy, And took into his armes the princely boy, 30 Whose birth last blest the bed of his sweet mother, And bad us first salute our prince, a brother. _The Prince and Duke of York._ Bright Charles! thou sweet dawn of a glorious Day! Centre of those thy grandsires (shall I say, Henry and James? or, Mars and Phoebus rather? 35 If this were Wisdome's god, that War's stern father; 'Tis but the same is said: Henry and James Are Mars and Phoebus under diverse names): O thou full mixture of those mighty souls Whose vast intelligences tun'd the poles 40 Of Peace and War; thou, for whose manly brow Both lawrels twine into one wreath, and woo To be thy garland: see (sweet prince), O see, Thou, and the lovely hopes that smile in thee, Art ta'n out and transcrib'd by thy great mother: 45 See, see thy reall shadow; see thy brother, Thy little self in lesse: trace in these eyne The beams that dance in those full stars of thine. From the same snowy alabaster rock Those hands and thine were hewn; those cherries mock 50 The corall of thy lips: thou wert of all This well-wrought copie the fair principall. _Lady Mary._