Swifter, Isis, swifter flow:
Muster all your streams together,
Then in a full body go,
And guard great Britain’s Monarch hither:
Charles, the mighty Sovereign,
Great Lord of the exhaustless main,
From whose fountain ev’ry tide
Your dead low waters are supplied.

Land him safely on her shore
Who his long absence does deplore
He with joy her walls does fill,
As high spring tides your channels swell,
Fills her walls to that excess
As lovers’ hearts with happiness;
Tender lovers, when return’d
To those dear arms whose loss they mourn’d.

Hark, hark! just now my list’ning ears
Are struck with the repeated sound
Of lab’ring oars, and it appears,
By growing strong, they’re this way bound.
See, see! it is the royal barge:
Oh, how she does my eyes delight!
Let bells ring, and great guns discharge,
Whilst num’rous bonfires banish night.

Welcome, dread Sir, to town,
Thrice welcome to this your chief seat,
Pensive at your retreat
As joyful at your return.
Though causeless jealousy
May by the factious be broach’d,
Your Augusta will never be
From your kinder arms debauch’d,
But with as great devotion meet,
And fall at your returning feet,
As those glad northern people run
To welcome and adore the sun
(Who, in their gloomy hemisphere
For certain months does disappear),
When they are told the pleasing news
By him who first the glimm’ring views.

Your Augusta he charms with no lesser delight
Who tells her the King keeps his court here tonight:
The King, whose presence, like the spring,
Recalls the beauty of each thing,
Makes gay the town as that the field,
And more delight and profit yield,
Makes all our sorrows vanish quite,
As daybreak clears the face of night.

Then since, Sir, from you all our blessings do flow,
And a tribute of praise to the fountain we owe,
’Tis fit, when the best of your subjects address,
In music and songs we our hearts should express,
As rivers back into the ocean do run,
And a homage do pay where their streams first begun.
May no harsher sounds e’er invade your blest ears,
To disturb your repose or alarm our fears;
No trumpet be heard in this place, or drum-beat,
But in compliment, or to invite you to eat,
Or this happy palace with any shouts ring
But the loud acclamations of ‘Long live the King!’