Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. II. The Seventeenth Century: Ben Jonson to Dryden

William Cartwright (1611–1643)

On His Majesty’s Recovery from the Small-Pox, 1633

I DO confess, the over-forward tongue

Of public duty turns into a wrong,

And after-ages, which could ne’er conceive

Our happy CHARLES so frail as to receive

Such a disease, will know it by the noise

Which we have made in shouting forth our joys;

And our informing duty only be

A well-meant spite, or loyal injury.

Let then the name be alter’d; let us say

They were small stars fix’d in a Milky-way,

Or faithful turquoises, which Heaven sent

For a discovery, not a punishment;

To show the ill, not make it; and to tell

By their pale looks the bearer was not well.

Let the disease forgotten be, but may

The joy return us yearly as the day;

Let there be new computes, let reckoning be

Solemnly made from His recovery;

Let not the Kingdom’s Acts hereafter run

From His (though happy) Coronation,

But from His Health, as in a better strain.

That plac’d Him on His throne; This makes Him reign.