Among the blind the one-eyed
blinkard
reigns.
Marvell - Poems
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SATIRES.
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SATIRES
THE CHARACTER OF HOLLAND,
Holland, that scarce deserves the name of
land,
As but the oflf-scouring of the British sand,
And so much earth as was contributed'
By English pilots when they heaved the lead,
Or what by the ocean's slow alluvion fell
Of shipwrecked cockle and the muscle-shell, —
This indigested vomit of the sea
Fell to the Dutch by just propriety.
Glad then, as miners who have found the ore.
They, with mad labour, fished the land to shore,
And dived as desperately fpr each piece
Of earth, as if 't had been of ambergreese.
Collecting anxiously small loads of clay.
Less than what building swallows bear away.
Or than those pills which sordid beetles roll.
Transfusing into them their dunghill soul.
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172 THE POEMS
How did they rivet, with gigantic piles,
Thorough the centre their new-catched miles,
And to the stake a struggling country bound,
Where barking waves still bait the forced
ground.
Building their watery Babel far more high
To reach the sea, than those to scale the sky !
Yet still his claim the injured ocean laid,
And oft at leap-frog o*er their steeples played,
As if on purpose it on land had come
To show them what's their mare liberum.
A daily deluge over them does boil ;
The earth and water play at level coil.
The fish ofttimes the burgher dispossessed,
And sat, not as a meat, but as a guest,
And oft the Tritons and the sea-nymphs saw
Whole shoals of Dutch served up for Cabillau,
Or, as they over the new level ranged
For pickled herring, pickled heerin changed.
Nature, it seemed, ashamed of her mistake.
Would throw their laud away at duck and drake ;
Therefore necessity, that first made kings,
Something like government among them brings ;
For, as with pygmies, who best kills the crane,
Among the hungry he that treasures grain.
Among the blind the one-eyed blinkard reigns.
So rules among the drowned he that drains :
Not who first see the rising sun, commands,
But who could first discern the rising lands ;
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OP MARVELL. 173
Who best could know to pump an earth so leak,
Him they their Lord, and Country's Father,
speak ;
To make a bank, was a great plot of state ;
Invent a shovel, and be a magistrate.
Hence some small dike-grave, unperceived, in-
vades
The power, and grows as 'twere a king of
spades ;
But, for less envy, some joined states endures,
Who look like a commission of the sewei*s :
For these Half-anders, half wet, and half dry.
Nor bear strict service, nor pure liberty.
• 'Tis probable religion, after this.
Came next in order, which they could not miss ;
How could the Dutch but be converted, when
The Apostles were so many fishermen ?
Besides, the waters of themselves did rise.
And, as their land, so them did re-baptize.
Though Herring for their God few voices missed.
And Poor-John to have been the Evangelist,
Faith, that could never twins conceive before.
Never so fertile, spawned upon this shore
More pregnant than their Marg*ret, that laid
down
For Hans-in-Kelder of a whole Hans-Town.
Sure when religion did itself embark.
And from the east would westward. steer its urk,
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174 THE POEMS
It Struck, and splitting on this unknown ground,
Each one thence pilhiged the first piece he
found :
Hence Amsterdam, Turk-Christian-Pagan-Jew,
Staple of sects, and mint of schism grew.
That bank of conscience, where not one so
strange
Opinion but finds credit, and exchange.
