Ingenious to their ruin, every age
Improves the arts and instruments of rage.
Death-hastening ills Nature enough has sent,
And yet men still a thousand more invent!
But Bacchus now, which led the Belgians on,
So fierce at first, to favour us begun ;
Brandy and wine, (their wonted friends) at length
Render them useless, and betray their strength.
So corn in fields, and in the garden, flowers,
Revive and raise themselves with moderate showers;
But overcharged with never ceasing rain,
Become too moist, and bend their heads again.
Their reeling ships on one another fall,
Without a foe, enough to ruin all.
Of this disorder, and the favouring wind,
The watchful English such advantage find,
Ships fraught with fire among the heap they throw,
And up the so-entangled Belgians blow.
The flame invades the powder-rooms, and then,
Their guns shoot bullets, and their vessels men.
The scorched Batavians on the billows float,
Sent from their own, to pass in Charon's boat.
And now, our royal Admiral success
(With all the marks of victory) does bless;
The burning ships, the taken, and the slain,
Proclaim his triumph o'er the conquered main.
Nearer to Holland, as their hasty flight
Carries the noise and tumult of the fight,
His cannons' roar, forerunner of his fame,
Makes their Hague tremble, and their Amsterdaın;
The British thunder does their houses rock,
And the Duke seems at every door to knock.
His dreadful streamer (like a comet's hair,
Threatening destruction) hastens their despair;
Makes them deplore their scattered fleet as lost,
And fear our present landing on their coast.
The trembling Dutch the approaching Prince behold, As sheep a lion leaping towards their fold;
Those piles, which serve them to repel the main,
They think too weak his fury to restrain.
'What wonders may not English valour work,
Led by the example of victorious York?
Or, what defence against him can they make,
Who, at such distance, does their country shake?
His fatal hand their bulwarks will o'erthrow,
And let in both the ocean, and the foe;'
Thus cry the people;—and, their land to keep,
Allow our title to command the deep;
Blaming their States' ill conduct, to provoke
Those arms, which freed them from the Spanish yoke.
Painter! excuse me, if I have awhile
Forgot thy art, and used another style;
For, though you draw armed heroes as they sit,
The task in battle does the Muses fit;
They, in the dark confusion of a fight,
Discover all, instruct us how to write;
And light and honour to brave actions yield,
Hid in the smoke and tumult of the field,
Ages to come shall know that leader's toil,
And his great name, on whom the Muses smile;
Their dictates here let thy famed pencil trace,
And this relation with thy colours grace.
Then draw the parliament, the nobles met,
And our great monarch high above them set;
Like young Augustus let his image be,
Triumphing for that victory at sea,
Where Egypt's Queen,* and Eastern Kings o'erthrown,
Made the possession of the world his own.
Last draw the Commons at his royal feet,
Pouring out treasure to supply his fleet;
They vow with lives and fortunes to maintain
Their King's eternal title to the main;
And with a present to the Duke, approve
His valour, conduct, and his country's love.
OF ENGLISH VERSE.
POETS may boast, as safely vain,
Their works shall with the world remain
Both, bound together, live or die,
The verses and the prophecy.
But who can hope his line should long
Last in a daily changing tongue?
While they are new, envy prevails;
And as that dies, our language fails.
When architects have done their part,
The matter may betray their art;
Time, if we use ill-chosen stone,
Soon brings a well-built palace down.
Poets that lasting marble seek,
Must carve in Latin, or in Greek;
We write in sand, our language grows,
And, like the tide, our work o'erflows.
Chaucer his sense can only boast;
The glory of his numbers lost!
Years have defaced his matchless strain;
And yet he did not sing in vain.
The beauties which adorned that age,
The shining subjects of his rage,
Hoping they should immortal prove,
Rewarded with success his love.
This was the generous poet's scope;
And all an English pen can hope,
To make the fair approve his flame,
That can so far extend their fame.
Verse, thus designed, has no ill fate,
If it arrive but at the date
Of fading beauty; if it prove
But as long-lived as present love.
TO A PERSON OF HONOUR,
UPON HIS INCOMPARABLE, INCOMPREHENSIBLE POEM, ENTITLED, 'THE BRITISH PRINCES.'*
IR! you've obliged the British nation more
Than all their bards could ever do before,
And, at your own charge, monuments as hard
As brass or marble to your fame have reared;
For, as all warlike nations take delight
To hear how their brave ancestors could fight,
You have advanced to wonder their renown,
And no less virtuously improved your own;
That 'twill be doubtful whether you do write,
Or they have acted, at a nobler height.
You, of your ancient princes, have retrieved
More than the ages knew in which they lived;
Explained their customs and their rights anew,
Better than all their Druids ever knew;
Unriddled those dark oracles as well
As those that made them could themselves foretell.
For as the Britons long have hoped, in vain,
Arthur would come to govern them again,
You have fulfilled that prophecy alone,
And in your poem placed him on his throne.
Such magic power has your prodigious pen
To raise the dead, and give new life to men,
Make rival princes meet in arms and love,
Whom distant ages did so far remove;
For as eternity has neither past
Nor future, authors say, nor first nor last,
But is all instant, your eternal Muse
All ages can to any one reduce.
Then why should you, whose miracles of art
Can life at pleasure to the dead impart,
* The British Princes, an heroic poem, by the Hon. Edward Howard, was published in 1669. Its bathos and vapid exaggeration brought down the unmerciful ridicule of the wits and satirists.
Trouble in vain your better-busied head,
To observe what times they lived in, or were dead?
For since you have such arbitrary power,
It were defect in judgment to go lower,
Or stoop to things so pitifully lewd,
As use to take the vulgar latitude;
For no man's fit to read what you have writ,
That holds not some proportion with your wit;
As light can no way but by light appear,
He must bring sense that understands it here.
TO A FRIEND OF THE AUTHOR,
A PERSON OF HONOUR, WHO LATELY WRIT A RELIGIOUS BOOK, ENTITLED, 'HISTORICAL APPLICATIONS, AND OCCASIONAL MEDITATIONS, UPON SEVERAL SUBJECTS.'*
is the man that dares engage
For piety in such an age!
Who can presume to find a guard
From scorn, when Heaven's so little spared?
Divines are pardoned; they defend
Altars on which their lives depend;
But the profane impatient are,
When nobler pens make this their care;
For why should these let in a beam
Of divine light to trouble them,
And call in doubt their pleasing thought,
That none believes what we are taught?
High birth, and fortune, warrant give
That such men write what they believe;
*The author of this little work, published anonymously in 1670, was George, Earl of Berkeley, a member of the Privy Council in the reigns of Charles II., James II., and William III. The main object of the volume, which reached a third edition in ten years, was to collect the testimonies of persons of eminence to the value of religion as exhibited in its influence on their lives, and at the approach of death. Lord Berkeley was a man of unaffected piety; and it has been supposed that the character of Lord Plausible, in the Plain Dealer, was intended by Wycherley as a portrait of him.
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