III. Charles the Second

Who comes with rapture greeted, and caress’d
With frantic love—his kingdom to regain?
Him Virtue’s Nurse, Adversity, in vain
Received, and fostered in her iron breast:
For all she taught of hardiest and of best,
Or would have taught, by discipline of pain
And long privation, now dissolves amain,
Or is remembered only to give zest
To wantonness.—Away, Circean revels!
Already stands our Country on the brink
Of bigot rage, that all distinction levels
Of truth and falsehood, swallowing the good name,
And, with that draught, the life-blood: misery, shame,
By Poets loathed; from which Historians shrink!