VERSES ΤΟ HER ROYAL HIGHNESS THE DUCHESS, ON THE MEMORABLE VICTORY GAINED BY THE DUKE AGAINST THE HOLLANDERS, JUNE THE 3, 1665, AND ON HER JOURNEY AFTERWARDS INTO THE NORTH. MADAM, WHEN, for our sakes, your hero you resigned You lodged your country's cares within your breast, (The mansion where soft love should only rest,) 5 10 Neptune, yet doubtful whom he should obey, 15 Held to them both the trident of the sea: The winds were hushed, the waves in ranks were cast, As awfully as when God's people past: * [As elsewhere, pronounced like "say."-ED.] "And it came to pass, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel prevailed: and when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed. "But Moses' hands were heavy, and they took a stone, and put it under him, and he sat thereon: and Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands, the one on the one side, and the other on the other side; and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. "And Joshua discomfited Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword."-Exodus, chap. xvii. 11-13th verses. The noise of the battle was distinctly heard at London, as appears from the Introduction to our author's "Essay on Dramatic Poetry," where the dialogue is supposed to pass in a barge, in which the speakers had embarked to hear more distinctly, "those undulations of sound, which, though almost vanishing before they reached them, seemed yet to retain somewhat of their first horror which they had betwixt the fleets." And, by the sound seeming to retire from them, Eugenius draws an omen of the enemy's defeat. This whole scene is imagined with so much liveliness, that we can hardly doubt Dryden was actually an ear-witness of the combat. 20 25 30 For absent friends we were ashamed to fear, 35 40 To bring them, as his slaves, to wait on you: In crowding heaps, to fill your moving court: 50 50 From every grove her numerous train's increased: 55 Each poet of the air her glory sings, And round him the pleased audience clap their wings. [There were some fears of a rising there.-ED.] |