No More Learning

No corner's left to hide my long wished birth.
Great queen of isles, yield me a safe retreat
From the crowned gods, who would my infants

eat ;
On me, O Delos, on my child-bed, smile.
My happy seed shall fix thy floating isle ;
I feel fierce pangs assault my teeming womb :
Xiucina, O Britannia, mother come !

BRITANNIA.

What doleful shrieks pierce my affrighted ear ?
Shall I ne*er rest for this lewd ravisher?



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OP MARVBLL. 191

Rapes, burnings, murders, are his royal sport,
These modish monsters haunt his peijured court.
No tumbling player so oft e'er changed his shape,
As tliis goat, fox, wolf, timorous French ape.
True Protestants, in Roman habits dressed.
With Scroggs* he baits, that rav'nous butcher's

beast;
Tresilian Jones,t that fair-faced crocodile.
Tearing their hearts, at once doth weep and

smile :
Neronian flames at London do him please,^
At Oxford plots,^ to act A^gathocles.
His plots revealed, his mirth is at an end,
And *6 fatal hour Bhall know no foe nor friend.
Last martyr's day I saw a cherub stand
Across my seas, one foot upon the land,
The other on the enthralled Gallic shore,
Proclaiming loud their time shall be no more.
This mighty power heaven's equal balance swayed,
And in one scale, crowns, crosiers, sceptres, laid ;



* Sir Williftm Scroggs was a judge, of whom Bishop Bur-
net gives this account.
** In ail the trials he set himself,
even with indecent earnestness, to get the prisoners to be
always cast"

t One of the same principles with Scroggs. He was pre-
ferred when Jeffreys was made Lord Chief Justice.

J The fire of London.

^ In the time of the plague, in the year 1665, the court
resided at Oxford, where the parliament wns then held ; at
which time were several private cabals, formed against the
Protestants.



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192 THE POEMS

In ibe other a sweet smiling babe did lie.
Circled with glories, decked with majesty.
With steady hand he poised the golden pair ;
The gilded gewgaws mounted in the air.
The ponderous babe, descending in its scale,

Leaped on my shore

! Nature triumphed, joy echoed through the eai*th,
The heavens bow down to see the blessed birth.
What's that I hear? A new bom babe's soft

cries.
And joyful mother's tender lullabies.
'Tis so ; behold, my daughter's passed all harms,
Cradling an infant in her fruitful arms ;
The very same the angelic vision showed,
In mien, in majesty, how like a god !
What a firm health does on her visage dwell !
Her sparkling eyes immortal youth foretell.
Eome, Sparta, Venice, could not all bring forth
So strong, so temperate, such lasting worth.