6

What peace can be, where both to one pretend,
But they more diligent and we more strong?
Or if a peace, it soon must have an end,

For they would grow too powerful, were it long.

7

Behold two nations then engaged so far

That each seven years the fit must shake each land; Where France will side to weaken us by war Who only can his vast designs withstand.

8

See how he feeds the Iberian with delays
To render us his timely friendship vain;
And while his secret soul on Flanders preys,
He rocks the cradle of the babe of Spain.

9

Such deep designs of empire does he lay

O'er them whose cause he seems to take in hand, And prudently would make them lords at sea

To whom with ease he can give laws by land.

ΙΟ

This saw our King, and long within his breast
His pensive counsels balanced to and fro;
He grieved the land he freed should be opprest
And he less for it than usurpers do.

II

His generous mind the fair ideas drew

Of fame and honour, which in dangers lay; Where wealth, like fruit on precipices, grew, Not to be gathered but by birds of prey.

12

The loss and gain each fatally were great,
And still his subjects called aloud for war:
But peaceful kings, o'er martial people set,
Each other's poise and counterbalance are.

c The Iberian. The Spaniard.

13

He first surveyed the charge with careful eyes,
Which none but mighty monarchs could maintain;
Yet judged, like vapours that from limbecs rise,
It would in richer showers descend again.

14

At length resolved to assert the watery ball,
He in himself did whole armados bring;
Him aged seamen might their master call

And choose for General, were he not their King.

15

It seems as every ship their Sovereign knows,
His awful summons they so soon obey;
So hear the scaly herd when Proteus blows,
And so to pasture follow through the sea.

16

To see this fleet upon the ocean move

Angels drew wide the curtains of the skies; And Heaven, as if there wanted lights above, For tapers made two glaring comets rise;

17

Whether they unctuous exhalations are

Fired by the sun, or seeming so alone,

Or each some more remote and slippery star
Which loses footing when to mortals shown;

d When Proteus blows, or

Cæruleus Proteus immania ponti

Armenta, et magnas pascit sub gurgite phocas.'-VIRG. [Not quoted exactly by Dryden :

'Cæruleus Proteus, magnum qui piscibus æquor
Et juncto bipedum curru metitur equorum.

Quippe ita Neptuno visum est; immania cujus
Armenta et turpes pascit sub gurgite_phocas.'
VIRG. Georg. iv. 388.]

The attempt at Berghen.

18

Or one that bright companion of the sun,
Whose glorious aspect sealed our new-born King,
And now, a round of greater years begun,

New influence from his walks of light did bring.

19

Victorious York did first with famed success

To his known valour make the Dutch give place; Thus Heaven our Monarch's fortune did confess, Beginning conquest from his royal race.

20

But since it was decreed, auspicious King,

In Britain's right that thou shouldst wed the main, Heaven as a gage would cast some precious thing, And therefore doomed that Lawson should be slain.

21

Lawson amongst the foremost met his fate,

Whom sea-green Sirens from the rocks lament; Thus, as an offering for the Grecian state,

He first was killed who first to battle went.

22

Their chiefe blown up, in air, not waves expired
To which his pride presumed to give the law;
The Dutch confessed Heaven present and retired,
And all was Britain the wide ocean saw.

23

To nearest ports their shattered ships repair,
Where by our dreadful cannon they lay awed;
So reverently men quit the open air

Where thunder speaks the angry gods abroad.

24

And now approached their fleet from India, fraught
With all the riches of the rising sun,

And precious sand from southern climatesf brought,
The fatal regions where the war begun.

• The Admiral of Holland.

f Southern climates. Guinea.

25

Like hunted castors conscious of their store,

Their way-laid wealth to Norway's coasts they bring;

There first the North's cold bosom spices bore,
And winter brooded on the eastern spring.

26

By the rich scent we found our perfumed prey,
Which, flanked with rocks, did close in covert lie;
And round about their murdering cannon lay,
At once to threaten and invite the eye.

27

Fiercer than cannon and than rocks more hard,
The English undertake the unequal war:
Seven ships alone, by which the port is barred,
Besiege the Indies and all Denmark dare.

28

These fight like husbands, but like lovers those;
These fain would keep and those more fain enjoy;
And to such height their frantic passion grows
That what both love both hazard to destroy.

29

Amidst whole heaps of spices lights a ball,
And now their odours armed against them fly:
Some preciously by shattered porcelain fall
And some by aromatic splinters die.

30

And though by tempests of the prize bereft,
In Heaven's inclemency some ease we find;
Our foes we vanquished by our valour left,
And only yielded to the seas and wind.

31

Nor wholly lost we so deserved a prey,
For storms repenting part of it restored,
Which as a tribute from the Baltic sea

The British ocean sent her mighty lord.

32

Go, mortals, now and vex yourselves in vain
For wealth, which so uncertainly must come;
When what was brought so far and with such pain
Was only kept to lose it nearer home.

33

The son who, twice three months on the ocean tost,
Prepared to tell what he had passed before,

Now sees in English ships the Holland coast
And parents' arms in vain stretched from the shore.

34

This careful husband had been long away

Whom his chaste wife and little children mourn, Who on their fingers learned to tell the day On which their father promised to return.

35

Such are the proud designs of human kinds,

And so we suffer shipwrack everywhere!

Alas, what port can such a pilot find

Who in the night of Fate must blindly steer!

36

The undistinguished seeds of good and ill

Heaven in his bosom from our knowledge hides, And draws them in contempt of human skill, Which oft for friends mistaken foes provides.

37

Let Munster's prelate ever be accurst,

In whom we seek the German faith in vain; Alas, that he should teach the English first

That fraud and avarice in the Church could reign!

Such are, &c. From Petronius: Si bene calculum ponas, ubique fit naufragium.' [Satyr. c. 115.] h The German faith.

Tacitus saith of them: Nullos mortalium armis aut fide ante Germanos esse.' [Said of the Germans, according to Tacitus, by two Germans. Ann. xiii. 45.]