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TO THE LORD GENERAL
CROMWELL

Cromwell, our chief of men, who through a cloud

Not of war only, but detractions rude, Guided by faith and matchless fortitude, To peace and truth thy glorious way hast ploughed,

And on the neck of crownèd Fortune proud

Hast reared God's trophies, and his work pursued,

While Darwen stream, with blood of Scots imbrued,

And Dunbar field, resounds thy praises loud,

And Worcester's laureate wreath: yet much remains

To conquer still; peace hath her victories No less renowned than war: new foes arise,

Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains.

Help us to save free conscience from the paw

Of hireling wolves, whose Gospel is their

maw.

ON THE LATE MASSACRE IN
PIEDMONT

Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones

Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;

Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,

When all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones,

Forget not: in thy book record their

groans

Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold

Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that

rolled

Mother with infant down the rocks. Their

moans

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II

Or taught my soul to fancy ought
But a white, celestial thought;
When yet I had not walked above
A mile or two from my first love,
And looking back-at that short space-
Could see a glimpse of His bright face;
When on some gilded cloud or flower
My gazing soul would dwell an hour,
And in those weaker glories spy
Some shadows of eternity;
Before I taught my tongue to wound
My conscience with a sinful sound,
Or had the black art to dispense,
A several sin to every sense,
But felt through all this fleshly dress
Bright shoots of everlastingness.

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And round beneath it, Time, in hours, Thousands there were as frantic as him

days, years,

Driv'n by the spheres

Like a vast shadow moved; in which the

world

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