What wondrous change in waking do I find, For a strange something does my sense unbind; Truth has possessed my darkened soul all o'er With an unusual light, not known before; And doth inform me, that some star is gone, From whose kind influence we had life alone. No sooner had this stranger seized my soul, But Rachel knocked, to raise me from my bed, And, with a voice of sorrow, did condole The loss of Charles, whom she declared was dead; Charles dost thou mean we King of England call, That lived within the mansion of Whitehall? Yes--'tis too true, &c. ] [Footnote 38: "Windsor Castle, in a monument to our late, sovereign, King Charles II.," contains some striking passages. But, for the tenuity of the pastoral, even the taste of the age can hardly excuse the author of "Venice Preserved." For example: Ye tender lambs, stray not so fast away; To weep and mourn, let us together stay; O'er all the universe let it be spread, That now the shepherd of the flock is dead; The royal Pan, that shepherd of the sheep, He, who to leave his flock did dying weep, Is gone! Ah! gone, ne'er to return from death's eternal sleep. ] [Footnote 39: We shall here insert the last meeting of the royal brothers, as described in "Windsor Castle," which the reader may contrast with the same theme in the "Threnodia:" Here, painter, if thou can'st, thy art improve, And show the wonders of fraternal love; How mourning James by fading Charles did stand, The dying grasping the surviving hand; How round each others necks their arms they cast, Moaned, with endearing murmurings, and embraced; And of their parting pangs such marks did give, 'Twere hard to guess which yet could longest live. Both their sad tongues quite lost the power to speak, And their kind hearts seemed both prepared to break. ] [Footnote 40: Perhaps the most extraordinary instance of flattery, wrought up to impiety, occurs in Mrs Behn's address to the queen on the death of her husband: Methinks I see you like the queen of heaven, To whom all patience and all grace was given; When the great lord of life himself was laid Upon her lap, all wounded, pale, and dead; Transpierced with anguish, even to death transformed, So she bewailed her god, so sighed, so mourned, So his blest image in her heart remained, So his blest memory o'er her soul still reigned; She lived the sacred victim to deplore, And never knew, or wished a pleasure more. ] [Footnote 41: These are even more numerous than the Elegiasts on Charles's death. In the Luttrell Collection there are the following rare pieces. "_Panegyris Jacobi serenissimi, &c. regi ipso die inaugurationis._" "A Poem on Do. by R. Philips." "On Do. by a Young Gentleman." "A Panegyrick on Do. by the Author of the Plea for Succession." "A New Song on Do." "A Poem on Do. by John Philips."