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 eyry 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.

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.

118

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.

* So glides, &c. From Virgil:

'Quum medii nexus extremæque agmina caudæ
Solvuntur, tardosque trahit sinus ultimus orbes,' &c.
[Georg. iii. 423.]

Fourth day's battle.

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.

126

And now, reduced on equal terms to fight,

Their ships like wasted patrimonies show, Where the thin scattering trees admit the light And shun each other's shadows as they grow.

127

The warlike Prince had severed from the rest
Two giant ships, the pride of all the main :
Which with his one so vigorously he pressed
And flew so home they could not rise again.
128

Already battered by his lee they lay;

In vain upon the passing winds they call; The passing winds through their torn canvas play And flagging sails on heartless sailors fall.

129

Their opened sides receive a gloomy light,
Dreadful as day let in to shades below;
Without, grim Death rides barefaced in their sight
And urges entering billows as they flow.

130

When one dire shot, the last they could supply, Close by the board the Prince's main-mast bore :

All three now helpless by each other lie,

And this offends not and those fear no more.

131

So have I seen some fearful hare maintain

A course, till tired before the dog she lay, Who, stretched behind her, pants upon the plain, Past power to kill as she to get away:

132

With his lolled tongue he faintly licks his prey;
His warm breath blows her flix up as she lies;
She, trembling, creeps upon the ground away
And looks back to him with beseeching eyes.

133

The Prince unjustly does his stars accuse,
Which hindered him to push his fortune on;
For what they to his courage did refuse
By mortal valour never must be done.

134

This lucky hour the wise Batavian takes

And warns his tattered fleet to follow home; Proud to have so got off with equal stakes, Where 'twas a triumph not to be o'ercomes.

135

The General's force, as kept alive by fight,
Now, not opposed, no longer can pursue;
Lasting till Heaven had done its courage right,
When he had conquered he his weakness knew.

136

He casts a frown on the departing foe

And sighs to see him quit the watery field;

His stern fixed eyes no satisfaction show

For all the glories which the fight did yield.