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.

Dryden probably had in mind some words in Virgil's comparison of the bursting open of the cave of Cacus by Hercules with the opening to view of the shades below. "Trepidentque immisso lumine Manes." (En. viii. 246, 327 of Translation.)

"The ghosts repine at violated night

And curse the invading sun and sicken at the sight."

Flix, the fur or soft hair of a hare or other animal. Mr. Halliwell mentions it as a Kentish provincialism. Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words.) Dyer speaks of sheep with flix, like deer, and not a woolly fleece:

"No locks Cormandel's, none Malacca's tribe
Adorn, but sleek of flix and brown like deer."

The Fleece, book i.

Dryden uses the word again for the fur of the hare in his Translation of the First Book of Ovid's Metamorphoses.

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'ercome.*

135

The General's force, as kept alive by fight,
Now not opposed, no longer can pursue;
Lasting till Heaven had done his 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.

137

Though, as when fiends did miracles avow,+

He stands confessed even by the boastful Dutch;

He only does his conquest disavow

And thinks too little what they found too much.

138

Returned, he with the fleet resolved to stay;

No tender thoughts of home his heart divide ;

Domestic joys and cares he puts away,

For realms are households which the great must guide.

139

As those who unripe veins in mines explore

On the rich bed again the warm turf lay

Till time digests the yet imperfect ore,
And know it will be gold another day ;+

22 "From Horace:

'Quos opimus

Fallere et effugere triumphus est.'

4 Od. iv. 51.

+ St. Mark iii. 11, 12. "And unclean spirits, when they saw him, fell down before him, and cried, saying, Thou art the Son of God. And he straitly charged them that they should not make him known.'

I See stanza 3 and Dryden's note. The same idea occurs again in Dryden's "King Arthur," in Merlin's prophecy of the greatness of England (act 5):

"Behold what rolling ages shall produce,

The wealth, the loves, the glories of our Isle
Which yet, like golden ore, unripe in beds,
Expect the warm indulgency of Heaven
To call them forth to light."

140

So looks our Monarch on this early fight,

The essay and rudiments of great success,
Which all-maturing time must bring to light,

While he, like Heaven, does each day's labour bless.

141

Heaven ended not the first or second day,

Yet each was perfect to the work designed:
God and kings work, when they their work survey,
And passive aptness in all subjects find.

142

In burdened vessels first with speedy care

His plenteous stores do seasoned timber send ;
Thither the brawny carpenters repair

And as the surgeons of maimed ships attend.

143

With cord and canvas from rich Hamburg sent
His navy's moulted wings he imps once more;*
Tall Norway fir their masts in battle spent,
And English oak sprung leaks and planks restore.

144

All hands employed, the royal work grows warm;†
Like labouring bees on a long summer's day,
Some sound the trumpet for the rest to swarm
And some on bells of tasted lilies play;

145

With gluey wax some new foundation lay

Of virgin-combs, which from the roof are hung;

Some armed within doors upon duty stay

Or tend the sick or educate the young:

His Majesty repairs the fleet.

To imp moulted wings means to renew and invigorate wings, the feathers of which have been moulted. To imp a wing is properly, and technically in falconry, to repair it by grafting new pieces on broken feathers. So Shakespeare says metaphorically in "Richard II." act 2, sc. 1:

'Imp out our drooping country's broken wing."

Dryden elsewhere uses imp loosely. "Imped with wings" is part of his description of
in his Translation of the fourth Georgic; and in the play of “(Edipus," act 4, sc. 1:
"With all the wings with which revenge
Could imp my flight."

young bees

In Scott's edition aid appears for imp, the correct reading, in this passage of "Edipus." +"Fervet opus: the same similitude in Virgil." Dryden refers to the description of the labours of bees, part of which is closely imitated here:

Foundation in first edition; foundations in edition of 1688 and subsequent editions.

Loyal London described.

146

So here some pick out bullets from the side,
Some drive old oakum through each seam and rift :
Their left hand does the caulking-iron guide,
The rattling mallet with the right they lift.

147

With boiling pitch, another near at hand,

From friendly Sweden brought, the seams instops,
Which well paid o'er the salt sea waves withstand
And shake them from the rising beak in drops.

148

Some the galled ropes with dauby marling+ bind
Or sear-cloth masts with strong tarpauling coats:
To try new shrouds one mounts into the wind,
And one below their ease or stiffness notes.

149

Our careful Monarch stands in person by,
His new cast cannons' firmness to explore;
The strength of big-corned powder loves to try,
And ball and cartridge sorts for every bore.

150

Each day brings fresh supplies of arms and men,
And ships which all last winter were abroad,

And such as fitted since the fight had been
Or new from stocks were fallen into road.

151

The goodly London, § in her gallant trim,
The phoenix-daughter of the vanished old,
Like a rich bride does to the ocean swim,
And on her shadow rides in floating gold.

152

Her flag aloft, spread ruffling to the wind,

And sanguine streamers seem the flood to fire;

The weaver, charmed with what his loom designed,
Goes on to sea and knows not to retire.

* Shakes is printed in both of the early editions, but the grammar requires shake, and the addition of s is a common misprint.

↑ Marling; a small line, smeared with tar, used for winding round ropes and cables to prevent their being fretted by the blocks.

Sear cloth, a corruption of cere-cloth, is here a verb, meaning to cover with cere-cloth or cloth prepared with wax. Some sear-cloth the masts with strong tarpauling coats." Sir Thomas Browne in his "Hydriotaphia" speaks of a dead body "sound and handsomely cereclothed that after seventy-eight years was found uncorrupted." See Richardson's Dictionary, sear-cloth and cere-cloth.

§ The old ship the " London," one of the navy of the Commonwealth, had perished by fire, and the City of London now presented the King with a new ship, called the "Loyal London."

153

With roomy decks, her guns of mighty strength,
Whose low-laid mouths each mounting billow laves,
Deep in her draught and warlike in her length,
She seems a sea-wasp flying on the waves.

154

This martial present, piously designed,

The loyal City give their best-loved King:

And, with a bounty ample as the wind,

Built, fitted, and maintained, to aid him bring.

155

By viewing nature Nature's handmaid, Art,

Makes mighty things from small beginnings grow:

Thus fishes first to shipping did impart

Their tail the rudder and their head the prow.

156

Some log perhaps upon the waters swam,
An useless drift, which, rudely cut within
And hollowed, first a floating trough became
And cross some rivulet passage did begin.

157

In shipping such as this the Irish kern

And untaught Indian on the stream did glide,
Ere sharp-keeled boats to stem the flood did learn,
Or fin-like oars* did spread from either side.

158

Add but a sail, and Saturn so appeared,

When from lost empire he to exile went,

And with the golden age to Tiber steered,

Where coin and first commerce he did invent. +

159

Rude as their ships was navigation then,

No useful compass or meridian known ;

Coasting, they kept the land within their ken,

And knew no North but when the pole-star shone.

* "Oar-finned galleys."-DENHAM, Cooper's Hill.

Digression concerning shipping and navigation.

It was fabled that Saturn, driven from his throne by his son Jupiter, fled to Italy and, there welcomed by Janus, king of Latium, and made a partner in his throne, civilized the Italians, who under his rule enjoyed a golden age. Derrick changed the last line of this stanza into

"Where coin and commerce first he did invent: "

and he has been followed by subsequent editors, including Scott. But Dryden placed the accent on the last syllable of commerce, as in stanza 163, and as was then universal.

F