MARIA. A POEM Occasioned by the DEATH OF Her MAJESTY. Addressed to Three Persons of Honour. By Mr. MOTTEUX. LONDON, Printed for Peter Buck, at the Sign of the Temple, near the Inner Temple Gate in Fleetstreet, 1695. A POEM Occasioned by the Death of Her Majesty. WEep, Britons, ease your Pangs of Grief; Your Breasts, o'reswoln with unborn sighs, Now heave and labour for Relief; The melting Vapours claim a Passage thro' your Eyes. While Majesty falls from the Throne, By Sorrow's greatness only known, While all the universal Loss condole, While Cruelty itself can boast a pitying Soul, Let not due Pomp to Sadness be denied: We can no more our Sighs and Tears control, Than hush the Wind or stop the Tide: This may for ever cease to flow, And That forget to blow, ere the sad Tributes fail to be, Divine MARIA, paid to thee! See! how affrighted Nature's Face, With ghastly Paleness, her Despair betrays; Alas! she finds the toilsome Cost Of numerous Ages in a Moment lost: So long designed! so soon destroyed! She scarce the Masterpiece enjoyed, Which she so laboured to create, But ne'er can hope to imitate. She sees what scarce can gain belief, Myriad of her surviving Children moan, Whole Nations join in one incessant Groan, And Mortal Foes confederates now in Grief; With Looks black as our Weeds, and drooping Head, Each seems to mourn a Parent dead. These, these become thee, wretched orphan Isle; For, what can now thy Cares beguile? MARIA lives to thee no more; Heaven now is rich, and Earth is poor. Nor can she want, or we bestow, More than a Monument below; A Monument, exalted as her Birth, And if Art this allows, expressive of her Worth. But what rich Mines will not the Charge exhaust? World's will be bankrupt by the Cost: In vain the New would load the Old With Mountain-heaps of tributary Gold; In vain, his Queen to honour more, The subject Ocean yield his richer store; Could this suffice to speak her Praise, What more than Man, what God the mighty Pile could raise? O Noble Montague, whose Muse, Second in Zeal and Force to none, Words equal to your Theme can choose, Words which the God of Verse might own; Sedate, yet sprightly; young, yet wise; At once you act, and can advise: Your towering Genius still appears Superior to whate'er it dares; Oh wo'ud you now but for a while The Poet and the Statesman reconcile, The World might, in your speaking Pictures, find The Charms of MARY's Face, the Graces of her Mind. And you who teach us how to write, Much by your Rules, by your Examples more, Great Normanby, in whom unite The noblest Gifts of Nature's store, Still like those great Intelligences prove, Who Man inform and cheer, while mighty Orbs they move. You did to Death a * The Temple of Death, a Poem. Temple raise, Which shall be lasting as its Reign; Now its best Victim claims your Lays, Erect a Monument to blessed MARIA's Praise, And spite of Death she'll live again. A fairer * The Picture of Anacreon, by the Marquis of Normanby. Picture now begin, Than e'er in Greece or Rome was seen; And, while MARIA's Face and Mind Most lively in your Thoughts you find, Draw every Virtue, every Grace, A Soul divine, an Angel's Face; And, from the bright Ideas, paint A Queen, a Beauty, and a Saint. Let Dorset, or Apollo, 'tis the same, (For, who but Dorset does inspire And doubly warm the whole harmonious Choir?) In equal Numbers celebrate her Fame: If Verse divine can reach her Praise, Immortal Dorset, she commands your Lays; Your Lays, soft, moving, strong, refined, And above Man in every kind. More good than great, though high as Sovereigns placed, You too were from a Beauty torn Fit for some God, but more in Dorset blest; And best can right a Queen, whom others can but mourn. Then, while those Children of your Mind, Which Wit produced, and Modesty does hide, Are to a longing World denied, Would you describe that Wonder of her kind, How would that Best-good-man (whose Wit so true Exposes Follies) her Perfections show! Who but such Noble Bards, with Sacred Rage, Can such a Sacred Theme engage? Arise then, great Triumvirate! arise; Warmth! Softness! Wit! together blend, To Urge, to Mourn, and to Commend: Raise, raise her Fame high as her Seat the Skies. While I, who only dare excite, Amidst the Throng, am ravished with your Flight; I, driun, and shipwrecked on the Muse's Rock, Your Smiles my only hopes, your Bounty all my stock; To rove like other Wretches forced, From our delicious Plains divorced, Till William, of good Kings the best, Force an ungrateful Nation to be blest. But if the whole Poetic Throng Must with her Praises make Parnassus' ring, Ah! let me late begin the Song; For, who so deeply grieved can sing? Yet once I'll try if nothing can compose Our too tempestuous Woes: Come, Horace, thou who best canst heal Substantial Pains, which Spirits feel; While thy close sense I boldly paraphrase, And strive my Thoughts by thine to raise, Teach me the Grief of others to assuage; And, if thou canst, make mine less fiercely rage. Vain is our hope, and vain our strife, To stem the rapid stream of Life: None can that Flux of Moment's, Time, control; * hheu! fugaces Posthume▪ etc. The 14th Ode of Horace ' s 2d Book partly imitated and paraphrased. Driven down the boisterous Torrent all Impetuously we roll; Into that boundless Ocean sure to fall Where, as Time ends, Eternity begins, And Man is ever lost, or endless Pleasure wins. In vain, when Age the Forehead rudely ploughs, Self-Love is frighted into Prayers and Vows, And Man to change heavens steadfast Will would try; Unfit to live, Yet more unfit to die; Spite of the holy Charm, the feeble Wretch must move: Not even true Piety could save Or but reprieve him from the Grave: While hoary Virtue does the Soul improve, The frailer Body does decay, And wither while we pray. Almighty Power, could long Converse with thee From Death thy truest Votaries free, Votaries, who, winged with Zeal, can rise, And, even below, familiar in the Skies; Thou knowst, that thy MARIA's Frame Had been immortal as her Fame. Say, Guides of Souls, who best her Zeal have known, And by its Flames revived your own, Was not what is your Business her Delight, While better than your words, her actions led us right? Even Sports, Pomps, Cares and Toils of State, By which religious Fires abate, But made her pious Flames aspire, As Rains, that quench a weak, increase a vigorous Fire. Yet soon she died; but died to live in Bliss: Too good for such a World, in vain it prayed; A better Life the loss of This repaid, The Saint was called to raise the Joys of Paradise. What then shall angry Fate appease? Nor Prayers, nor Gifts can make it kind; It changes all, but its Decrees, And still is deaf as well as blind. What by three Bodies could Geryon gain, But thrice to feel a mortal Pain? Death from its triple Hold can force reluctant Life; The struggling Spirits, with unequal Strife, Member by Member quit, and Post by Post: Scared, trembling, pale, unwilling to depart, Life leaves its inmost Fort, the Heart; Unknowing where to fly, when that Retreat is lost. Not so Marias' left its beauteous Seat; Her will was heavens; nor could she show Less than a Mind firm, like herself, and great: Yet moved by weeping Kingdoms once her Care, And more by her loved WILLIAM's deep despair, She but consented, not desired, to go. So Royal Brides, whom Native Lands bemoan, Should unconcerned depart, t' ascend a distant Throne. Proud humane Emmets, 'tis in vain Your fellow Emmets think you great; The Queen, who o'er three Kingdoms and the Main, O'er her more noble Self, and WILLIAM's Heart did reign, Submits to stronger Fate. Mean Souls, then learn to die and be forgot, Nor murmur at your Lot. What though a Tytius' proudly rise, And dare affront the neighbouring Skies? Behold! the more than Giant stalk along, Even Titan's Brood around, Seem but a Pigmy Throng: But see! a Dart now makes him bite the ground: Tho Heaven and Earth, at once, seemed his abode, Yet down he headlong fell, and shook the groaning Plain, At once its Measure and its Load, No more to rise again. How weak he seemed to Death, how small! How sudden was his Fall! The Poor, the Rich, the Weak, the Strong, The Fool, the Wise, the Coward and the Brave, The pious few, the guilty Throng, All (cruel Fate!) all hasten to the Grave: Th' insatiate Grave will swallow all The little things we great and mighty call: Time does produce, record, and then deface; Man dies, and then his Fame, though Life itself it cost: Distance of Time, like that of Place, Will lessen Things till they are lost. Cursed thought! must then thy Fame, MARIA, dye? It must; but yet it shall survive While Men or Learning are alive, Till all in one vast Ruin buried lie. In vain, to scape th' inevitable Dart, We move immured in Steel; Soon as 'tis shot, 'tis lodged within the heart, We feel that last of Woes, than ever cease to feel: Fierce storms of War we eat in vain, Or those on the less boisterous Main; Dishonourably to be safe, To tempting Gain and prompting Glory deaf, And, within Skreens entrenched, defy Infectious Atoms scattered thro' the Sky, And make a foreign Warmth our dying Heat supply: Alas! whate'er begins must end, To the same fatal Port by various Ways we tend; Nor can we stray, but downwards go; Our Centre is below. At least the Centre of our Dust is there; Our Fire, the Soul, springs to its native Skies, And there MARIA claimed the loftiest Sphere; That Sun set here, more gloriously to rise: So, to become supremely bright, Some sovereign Orb removes the Throne Where in the vast Expanse it shone; Leaves subject Globes awhile in night, Then gilds new Worlds, with purest streams of Light. While in those blessed Empyreal Plains The Royal Saint triumphant reigns, Were guilty Souls their Fate to choose, They would the Loan of cursed Humanity refuse; So small the Principal, so great the Use! The Gain so doubtful, and the Loss so sure! So soon that hasty Moment, Life, to lose, So long a living Death endure! All on which Vanity depends Is, like it, vain, and quickly passed; House, Gardens, Lands, Wealth, Honours, Friends, Vanish from us, or we from them in haste. Even that which most a Lover charms, The dear kind Beauty, in whose circling Arms, Lost in fierce Raptures of Delight, He lives an Age each fleeting Night; Even that, (ah killing thought!) must go; That earthly Heaven is transitory too. WILLIAM himself, commissioned by the Sky To do its Work and fix the World again, Sees th' only Charm, which made that easy, die; The best of Women leaves the best of Men. By Birth, by Merit, and by Choice a Queen, And something more as godlike WILLIAM's Wife, She on a glorious Throne was seen To reconcile two Opposites in Life; The King still courted, while the Husband swayed, The Queen commanded, and the Wife obeyed. Her Royal hands, above debasing Pride, Could wield a Sceptre, yet a Needle guide: So Pallas could at once the Loom attend, And States adorn, teach, govern, and defend. Even Sloth in its most sure Retreat the Court, Learned to make Work its sport: No more on downy Beds of state, Proudly unactive, idly great, Supinely laid, it lolled in lazy ease; But, roused from its lethargic Rest, In vain it sought the the Fair to please; By her example Industry was blest; Even City Matrons darling Sloth disclaim, And sleeping Deans awake at great MARIA's Name. From Court, Deceit and Envy disappear, And Truth and Charity no more are strangers there. Ready when e'er her People's Want did call, The Manna still did regularly fall. Oh! had not those, who wish again For Egypt's Food with Egypt's Chain, Joined with our sins, and caused her Flight, Ere we could reach the Promised Land of Peace, Not distant, but in Sight; She than had bid all Want and Sorrow cease; And you had seen, ungrateful murmuring Band, Wine, Milk, and Honey, streaming thro' the Land. Hence, Flattery; pleasing Poison, hence; Of all Addressers, only thou Couldst Force a Frown from so serene a Brow; Her fragrant Virtue's truest Sweets dispense, She shunned thee living, and disclaims thee▪ now▪ Come, Truth, relate— But hold my Muse, nor try With feeble Wings to reach the loftiest Sky: Thou mayst, thy Sorrow to deceive, Think on the Queen, as if still here she reigned▪ But, lest the Goddess be profaned, Now to some God her Praises leave. And lo! he's found! her Royal Mourner's Love, His Tears, his Grief, that long, that kill Scene The highest Panegyric prove, As her least Praise is that she was a Queen. Hear him even Death, his Foe; implore; There's nothing now worth living for, he cries: She lost a Life; He, who survives her, more; She died but once, He every Moment dies. He nothing loves but Grief and Grief renewed, Sighs, Tears, and Groans, the dismal Train of Woe, The Night's black shades, the desert's solitude, The Raven's Croak, the widowed Turtle's Cooe, The murmuring Fall of Streams, the Sight of Graves, The Hopes of dying, and the Thoughts of Her. He, who the World from Ruin saves, Can to that World those dearer Thoughts prefer. Ah, Widowed Prince, who hopeless grieve, Since none thy Blessings can retrieve, That we but could assuage thy Woe! Yet, for the tottering World, still condescend to live, Nor, be thyself our Foe. See, Britain's Genius seized with dire affright, Dreading to think thou too mayst die! See that of haughty Gallia by, With ghastly Joy betray his Spite! A half-smile on his horrid Visage see, Yet checked by Fear of Thee! See mournful Europe dread the coming Spring, And in the Husband miss the King; The King, who firm, while all was trembling, stood, Resolved like Fate, and dauntless like a God. To Arms, Heroic Prince, to Arms; Glory, like Love, has powerful Charms: Let Glory now thy Soul engross, And recompense its Rival's Loss. Bid Trumpets sound, and nothing name But Battles, Conquests, Triumphs, Fame: So shall, with Tears of Blood, insulting Foes Weep in their Turn, and doubly feel our Woes. Look up, the ruling Planets smile, And say to Britain as they roll; " Soon shall thy Genius, warlike Isle, " That of declining France control: " This Year, ruled by thy Monarch and the Sun, " Shall finish what the last begun: " Severely just, a while we frowned, " But thy MARIA for thy Crimes atoned. What should prevail against a State Secure in WILLIAM and his Fate? Be this your task, ye Orbs, and with Success His great Achievements crown: Your Revolutions, by themselves, are less Than by the Hero's Valour known; In WILLIAM's Fame secure your own: A fleeting Year to him you give, His Deeds, even when 'tis past, for ever bid it live; As when a Prince inspires a Muse to sing, Her Lays immortalize the Poet and the King. FINIS.