our own despite.
The manna falls, yet that celestial bread
Like Jews you munch, and murmur while you feed.
May not your fortune be, like theirs, exiled,
Yet forty years to wander in the wild!
Or if it be, may Moses live at least, 70
To lead you to the verge of promised rest!

Though poets are not prophets, to foreknow
What plants will take the blight, and what will grow,
By tracing Heaven, his footsteps may be found:
Behold! how awfully he walks the round!
God is abroad, and, wondrous in his ways,
The rise of empires, and their fall surveys;
More, might I say, than with an usual eye,
He sees his bleeding church in ruin lie,
And hears the souls of saints beneath his altar cry. 80
Already has he lifted high the Sign,[166]
Which crown'd the conquering arms of Constantine;
The Moon[167] grows pale at that presaging sight,
And half her train of stars have lost their light.

Behold another Sylvester,[168] to bless
The sacred standard, and secure success;
Large of his treasures, of a soul so great,
As fills and crowds his universal seat.
Now view at home a second Constantine;
(The former too was of the British line;)[169] 90
Has not his healing balm your breaches closed,
Whose exile many sought, and few opposed?
Or, did not Heaven by its eternal doom
Permit those evils, that this good might come?
So manifest, that even the moon-eyed sects
See whom and what this Providence protects.
Methinks, had we within our minds no more
Than that one shipwreck on the fatal Ore,[170]
That only thought may make us think again,
What wonders God reserves for such a reign. 100
To dream that Chance his preservation wrought,
Were to think Noah was preserved for nought;
Or the surviving eight were not design'd
To people Earth, and to restore their kind.

When humbly on the royal babe we gaze,
The manly lines of a majestic face
Give awful joy: 'tis Paradise to look
On the fair frontispiece of Nature's book:
If the first opening page so charms the sight,
Think how the unfolded volume will delight! 110

See how the venerable infant lies
In early pomp; how through the mother's eyes
The father's soul, with an undaunted view,
Looks out, and takes our homage as his due.
See on his future subjects how he smiles,
Nor meanl