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 sun-shine fall. You have already wearied Fortune so, She cannot farther be your friend or foe; But sits all breathless, and admires to feel A fate so weighty, that it stops our 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 shews; 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; 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 unimpaired 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. 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. SATIRE ON THE DUTCH. This Satire was, as the title informs us, written in 1662: probably towards the latter end of the year, when Charles, having quarrelled with De Wit, then at the head of the public affairs of Holland, was endeavouring to patch up an union with France, to which kingdom he was naturally partial, against the States, whom he hated, both as a republic, and an association of vulgar merchants. This impolitic alliance did not then take place, notwithstanding the sale of Dunkirk, (conquered by the arms of Cromwell,) to France, for L.400,000. On the contrary, in 1665 France armed in defence of Holland. But this was contrary to the expectations and wishes of Charles; and accordingly Dryden, in 1662, alludes to the union of the two crowns against the States as a probable event. The verses are adapted to the comprehension of the vulgar, whom they were intended to inflame. Bold invective, and coarse raillery, supply the place of the wit and argument, with which Dryden, when the time fitted, knew so well how to arm his satire.