What doleful shrieks pierce my
affrighted
ear ?
Marvell - Poems
'Tis just what torments poets e'er did feign,
Thou first historically shouldst sustain.
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OF BIARVELL. 189
Thus-, by irrevocable sentence cast,
Mat only master of these revels passed,
And straight he vanished in a cloud of pitch,
Such as unto the sabbath bears the witch.
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190 THE POEMS
OCEANA AND BRITANNIA.
Non ego sum votes, sed prisci conscius isvi.
OCEANA.
Whither, O whither, wander I forlorn,
Fatal to friends, and to my foes a scorn ?
My pregnant womb is laboring to bring forth
Thy offspring, Archon, heir to thy just worth.
Archon, O Archon, hear my groaning cries !
Lucina, help, assuage my miseries !
Saturnian spite pursues me thi-ough the earth.
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.
