How strangely active are the arts of peace, Whose restless motions less than war's do cease! Peace is not freed from labour but from noise; And war more force, but not more pains employs; Such is the mighty swiftness of your mind, That, like the earth, it leaves our sense behind; 110 While you so smoothly turn and roll our sphere, That rapid motion does but rest appear. For, as in nature's swiftness, with the throng Of flying orbs while ours is borne along, All seems at rest to the deluded eye, Moved by the soul of the same harmony,-- So, carried on by your unwearied care, We rest in peace, and yet in motion share. Let envy then those crimes within you see, From which the happy never must be free; 120 Envy, that does with misery reside, The joy and the revenge of ruin'd pride. Think it not hard, if at so cheap a rate You can secure the constancy of fate, Whose kindness sent what does their malice seem, By lesser ills the greater to redeem. Nor can we this weak shower a tempest call, But drops of heat, that in the sunshine fall. You have already wearied fortune so, She cannot further be your friend or foe; 130 But sits all breathless, and admires to feel A fate so weighty, that it stops her wheel. In all things else above our humble fate, Your equal mind yet swells not into state, But, like some mountain in those happy isles, Where in perpetual spring young nature smiles, Your greatness shows: no horror to affright, But trees for shade, and flowers to court the sight: Sometimes the hill submits itself a while In small descents, which do its height beguile: 140 And sometimes mounts, but so as billows play, Whose rise not hinders, but makes short our way. Your brow, which does no fear of thunder know, Sees rolling tempests vainly beat below; And, like Olympus' top, the impression wears Of love and friendship writ in former years. Yet, unimpair'd with labours, or with time, Your age but seems to a new youth to climb. Thus heavenly bodies do our time beget, And measure change, but share no part of it. 150 And still it shall without a weight increase, Like this new year, whose motions never cease. For since the glorious course you have begun Is led by Charles, as that is by the sun, It must both weightless and immortal prove, Because the centre of it is above. * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 31: 'Hyde:' the far-famed historian Clarendon.] * * * * * SATIRE ON THE DUTCH.[32] WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1662.