87

The dastard crow, that to the wood made wing
And sees the groves no shelter can afford,
With her loud caws her craven kind does bring,
Who, safe in numbers, cuff the noble bird.

88

Among the Dutch thus Albemarle did fare :
He could not conquer and disdained to fly :
Past hope of safety, 'twas his latest care,
Like falling Cæsar, decently to die.

89

Yet pity did his manly spirit move,

To see those perish who so well had fought;
And generously with his despair he strove,
Resolved to live till he their safety wrought.

90

Let other Muses write his prosperous fate,
Of conquered nations tell and kings restored:
But mine shall sing of his eclipsed estate,

Which, like the sun's, more wonders does afford.

91

He drew his mighty frigates all before,

On which the foe his fruitless force employs ;

His weak ones deep into his rear he bore

Remote from guns, as sick men from the noise.*

92

His fiery cannon did their passage guide,

And following smoke obscured them from the foe;
Thus Israel, safe from the Egyptian's pride,

By flaming pillars and by clouds did go.

93

Elsewhere the Belgian force we did defeat,
But here our courages did theirs subdue;
So Xenophon once led that famed retreat
Which first the Asian empire overthrew.

94

The foe approached; and one for his bold sin

Was sunk, as he that touched the Ark was slain :†
The wild waves mastered him and sucked him in,
And smiling eddies dimpled on the main.

*So changed in the edition of 1688 from the first edition, in which the line stood:

"Remote from guns as sick men are from noise."

And this variation is an improvement.

"And they carried the ark of God in a new cart out of the house of Abinadab: and Uzza and Ahio drave the cart....And when they came unto the threshing-floor of Chidon, Uzza put forth his

95

This seen, the rest at awful distance stood:
As if they had been there as servants set
To stay or to go on, as he thought good,
And not pursue but wait on his retreat.

96

So Libyan huntsmen on some sandy plain,
From shady coverts roused, the lion chase:
The kingly beast roars out with loud disdain,
And slowly moves, unknowing to give place. *
97

But if some one approach to dare his force,
He swings his tail and swiftly turns him round,
With one paw seizes on his trembling horse,
And with the other tears him to the ground.

98

Amidst these toils succeeds the balmy night;
Now hissing waters the quenched guns restore:
And weary waves, withdrawing from the fight,
Lie lulled and panting on the silent shore.

99

The moon shone clear on the becalmed flood,

Where, while her beams like glittering silver play,

Upon the deck our careful General stood,

And deeply mused on the succeeding day.‡

"Yet like an English general will I die,

"And all the ocean make my spacious grave:

"Women and cowards on the land may lie ;

"The sea's a tomb that's proper for the brave."

hand to hold the ark; for the oxen stumbled. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzza, and he smote him, because he put his hand to the ark: and there he died before God." (1 Chronicles xiii. 7-10.)

"The simile is Virgil's: 'Vestigia retro improperata refert.'" So briefly and imperfectly quoted by Dryden from the long and beautiful comparison of Turnus with the angry lion: "Haud aliter retro dubius vestigia Turnus Improperata refert, et mens exæstuat ira." Æn. ix. 797

"Weary waves, from Statius:

10

"The 3d of June, famous for two former victories;" in 1653 and 1665, both over the Dutch.

Third day.

102

Restless he passed the remnants of the night,
Till the fresh air proclaimed the morning nigh;
And burning ships, the martyrs of the fight,
With paler fires beheld the eastern sky,

103

But now, his stores of ammunition spent,
His naked valour is his only guard;
Rare thunders are from his dumb cannon sent
And solitary guns are scarcely heard.

104

Thus far had Fortune power, here forced to stay;
Nor longer durst with virtue be at strife;

This as a ransom Albemarle did pay

For all the glories of so great a life.

105

For now brave Rupert from afar appears,

Whose waving streamers the glad General knows ;
With full-spread sails his eager navy steers,
And every ship in swift proportion grows.

106

The anxious Prince had heard the cannon long
And from that length of time dire omens drew
Of English overmatched, and Dutch too strong
Who never fought three days but to pursue.

107

Then, as an eagle, who with pious care
Was beating widely on the wing for prey,

To her now silent eiry does repair,

And finds her callow infants forced away;

108

Stung with her love, she stoops upon the plain,
The broken air loud whistling as she flies;
She stops and listens and shoots forth again
And guides her pinions by her young ones' cries.

109

With such kind passion hastes the Prince to fight
And spreads his flying canvas to the sound;
Him whom no danger, were he there, could fright,
Now absent, every little noise can wound.

ΠΙΟ

As in a drought the thirsty creatures cry
And gape upon the gathered clouds for rain,
And first the martlet* meets it in the sky,

And with wet wings joys all the feathered train;

III

With such glad hearts did our despairing men
Salute the appearance of the Prince's fleet,
And each ambitiously would claim the ken
That with first eyes did distant safety meet.

112

The Dutch, who came like greedy hinds before
To reap the harvest their ripe ears did yield,
Now look like those, when rolling thunders roar
And sheets of lightning blast the standing field.

113

Full in the Prince's passage, hills of sand

And dangerous flats in secret ambush lay,
Where the false tides skim o'er the covered land
And seamen with dissembled depths betray.

114

The wily Dutch, who, like fallen angels, feared
This new Messiah's coming, there did wait,
And round the verge their braving vessels steered
To tempt his courage with so fair a bait.

115

But he unmoved contemns their idle threat,

Secure of fame whene'er he please to fight;

His cold experience tempers all his heat,

And inbred worth does† boasting valour slight.

116

Heroic virtue did his actions guide,

And he the substance, not the appearance, chose;
To rescue one such friend he took more pride
Than to destroy whole thousands of such foes.

117

But when approached, in strict embraces bound
Rupert and Albemarle together grow;
He joys to have his friend in safety found,

Which he to none but to that friend would owe.

• Martlet, a swift or swallow. "Some swifts, the giants of the swallow-kind." (The Hind and the Panther, part 3,1. 547; where Dryden adds in a note: otherwise called martlets.") "Guest of summer, the temple-haunting martlet." Shakespeare, Macbeth, 1. 6.)

↑ Does in first edition: doth, edition of 1688 and subsequent editions.

118

Fourth day's battle.

The cheerful soldiers, with new stores supplied,
Now long to execute their spleenful will;
And in revenge for those three days they tried
Wish one like Joshua's, when the sun stood still.*
119

Thus reinforced, against the adverse fleet,

Still doubling ours, brave Rupert leads the way;
With the first blushes of the morn they meet,

And bring night back upon the new-born day.

120

His presence soon blows up the kindling fight,
And his loud guns speak thick like angry men;
It seemed as slaughter had been breathed all night,
And Death new pointed his dull dart again,

121

The Dutch too well his mighty conduct know
And matchless courage, since the former fight;
Whose navy like a stiff stretched cord did show,
Till he bore in and bent them into flight.

122

The wind he shares, while half their fleet offends
His open side and high above him shows;

Upon the rest at pleasure he descends,

And doubly harmed he double harms bestows.

123

Behind, the General mends his weary pace,
And sullenly to his revenge he sails;
So glides some trodden serpent on the grass,
And long behind his wounded volume trails.

124

The increasing sound is borne to either shore,
And for their stakes the throwing nations fear,

Their passion double with the cannons' roar,
And with warm wishes each man combats there.

125

Plied thick and close as when the fight begun,
Their huge unwieldy navy wastes away:
So sicken waning moons too near the sun

And blunt their crescents on the edge of day.

Joshua x. 13. "And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. " "So glides, &c. From Virgil:

"Quum medii nexus extremæque agmina cauda
Solvuntur, tardosque trahit sinus ultimus orbes,' &c."

Georg. iii. 423.