'When in mid-air the golden trump shall sound,
To raise the nations under ground;
When in the Valley of Jehoshaphat,
The judging God shall close the book of fate,
And there the last assizes keep
For those who wake, and those who sleep;—
When rattling bones together fly
From the four corners of the sky;
When sinews o'er the skeletons are spread,
Those clothed with life, and life inspires the dead;
The sacred Poets first shall hear the sound,
And foremost from the tomb shall bound,
For they are covered with the lightest ground;
And straight, with inborn vigour, on the wing,
Like mounting larks, to the new morning sing.
There thou, sweet Saint! before the choir shalt go,
As harbinger of heaven, the way to show,
The way which thou so well hadst learnt below.'
The allusion to the grief of her brother Henry, the Admiral, then at sea, is very fine:
'Meantime her warlike brother on the seas,
His waving streamers to the wind displays,
And vows, for his return, with fond devotion pays.
Ah, generous youth! that wish forbear,—
The winds too soon will waft thee here!
Slack all thy sails! and fear to come;—
Alas! thou know'st not—thou art wrecked at home.'
Her skill as a painter he depicts in the following happy lines:
'Her pencil drew whate'er her soul designed,
And oft the happy draught surpass'd the image in her mind.
The sylvan scenes of herds and flocks,
The fruitful plains, and barren rocks;
Of shallow brooks that flowed so clear
The bottom did the top appear:
Of deeper, too, and ampler floods,
Which, as in mirrors, showed the woods:
Of lofty trees with sacred shades,
And perspectives of pleasant glades,
Where nymphs of brightest form appear,
And shaggy satyrs standing near,
Which them at once admire and fear.
The ruins, too, of some majestic piece
Boasting the power of ancient Rome or Greece;
Whose statues, friezes, columns, broken lie,
And, though defaced, the wonder of the eye;
What Nature, Art, bold Fiction e'er durst frame,
Her forming hand gave feature to the name.'
Dryden then alludes to her portraits of the royal family—and first of the King:
'For, not content to express his outward part,
Her hand called out the image of his heart.'
Of his Consort's likeness the poet gracefully observes:
'Our phœnix Queen was pourtrayed, too, so bright,
Beauty alone could beauty take so right.'
And, with a grand hyperbole, the poem ends with the above prediction that at the last day the Poets shall first awake at the sound in mid-air of the golden trump: