To sully and pollute the sacred infant's year. } Five months to discord and debate were given;[316] He sanctifies the yet remaining seven. Sabbath of months! henceforth in him be blest, And prelude to the realms perpetual rest! Let his baptismal drops for us atone;[317] Lustrations for offences not his own: Let conscience, which is interest ill disguised,[318] In the same font be cleansed, and all the land baptized. Unnamed[319] as yet; at least unknown to fame; Is there a strife in heaven about his name, Where every famous predecessor vies, And makes a faction for it in the skies? Or must it be reserved to thought alone? Such was the sacred Tetragrammaton.[320] Things worthy silence must not be revealed; Thus the true name of Rome[321] was kept concealed, To shun the spells and sorceries of those, Who durst her infant majesty oppose. But when his tender strength in time shall rise To dare ill tongues, and fascinating eyes, This isle, which hides the little Thunderer's fame, Shall be too narrow to contain his name: The artillery of heaven shall make him known; Crete[322] could not hold the god, when Jove was grown. As Jove's increase,[323] who from his brain was born, Whom arms and arts did equally adorn, Free of the breast was bred, whose milky taste Minerva's name to Venus had debased; So this imperial babe rejects the food, That mixes monarch's with plebeian blood:[324] Food that his inborn courage might controul, Extinguish all the father in his soul, And for his Estian race, and Saxon strain, Might reproduce some second Richard's reign. Mildness he shares from both his parents' blood; But kings too tame are despicably good: Be this the mixture of this regal child, By nature manly, but by virtue mild. Thus far the furious transport of the news Had to prophetic madness fired the muse; Madness ungovernable, uninspired, Swift to foretel whatever she desired. Was it for me the dark abyss to tread, And read the book which angels cannot read? How was I punished, when the sudden blast[325] The face of heaven, and our young sun, o'ercast! Fame, the swift ill increasing as she rolled, Disease, despair, and death, at three reprises told: At three insulting strides she stalked the town, And, like contagion, struck the loyal down. Down fell the winnowed wheat; but, mounted high, The whirlwind bore the chaff, and hid the sky. Here black rebellion shooting from below, } (As earth's gigantic brood by moments grow,) } And here the sons of God are petrified with woe:} An apoplex of grief! so low were driven The saints, as hardly to defend their heaven. As, when pent vapours run their hollow round, Earthquakes, which are convulsions of the ground, Break bellowing forth, and no confinement brook,