Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. II. The Seventeenth Century: Ben Jonson to Dryden
John Dryden (16311700)Extracts from Annus Mirabilis: The Attempt at Berghen
A
With all the riches of the rising sun,
And precious sand from southern climates brought,
The fatal regions where the war begun.
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.
Which, flanked with rocks, did close in covert lie;
And round about their murdering cannon lay,
At once to threaten and invite the eye.
The English undertake the unequal war:
Seven ships alone, by which the port is barred,
Besiege the Indies and all Denmark dare.
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.
And now their odours armed against them fly:
Some preciously by shattered porcelain fall,
And some by aromatic splinters die.
In Heaven’s inclemency some ease we find;
Our foes we vanquished by our valour left,
And only yielded to the seas and wind.
For storms repenting part of it restored,
Which as a tribute from the Baltic sea
The British ocean sent her mighty lord.
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.
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.
Whom his chaste wife and little children mourn,
Who on their fingers learned to tell the day
On which their father promised to return.
And so we suffer shipwrack everywhere!
Alas, what port can such a pilot find
Who in the night of Fate must blindly steer!