Like hunted castors conscious of their store,
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.
By the rich scent we found our perfumed prey,
Which, flanked with rocks, did close in covert lie;
And round about their murdering cannon lay,
At once to threaten and invite the eye.
Fiercer than cannon and than rocks more hard,
The English undertake the unequal war:
Seven ships alone, by which the port is barred,
Besiege the Indies and all Denmark dare.
These fight like husbands, but like lovers those;
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.
Amidst whole heaps of spices lights a ball,
And now their odours armed against them fly:
Some preciously by shattered porcelain fall,
And some by aromatic splinters die.
And though by tempests of the prize bereft,
In Heaven's inclemency some ease we find;
Our foes we vanquished by our valour left,
And only yielded to the seas and wind.
Nor wholly lost we so deserved a prey,
For storms repenting part of it restored,
Which as a tribute from the Baltic sea
The British ocean sent her mighty lọrd.
Go, mortals, now and vex yourselves in vain
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.
The son who, twice three months on the ocean tost,
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
This careful husband had been long away,
Whom his chaste wife and little children mourn,
Who on their fingers learned to tell the day
On which their father promised to return.
Such are the proud designs of human kind,
And so we suffer shipwrack everywhere!
Alas, what port can such a pilot find
Who in the night of Fate must blindly steer!
Such was the rise of this prodigious fire,
Which, in mean buildings first obscurely bred,
From thence did soon to open streets aspire,
And straight to palaces and temples spread.
The diligence of trades, and noiseful gain,
And luxury, more late, asleep were laid;
All was the Night's, and in her silent reign
No sound the rest of Nature did invade.
In this deep quiet, from what source unknown,
Those seeds of fire their fatal birth disclose;
And first few scattering sparks about were blown,
Big with the flames that to our ruin rose.
Then in some close-pent room it crept along,
And, smouldering as it went, in silence fed;
Till the infant monster, with devouring strong,
Walked boldly upright with exalted head.
Now, like some rich or mighty murderer,
Too great for prison which he breaks with gold, Who fresher for new mischiefs does appear,
And dares the world to tax him with the old,
So scapes the insulting fire his narrow jail,
And makes small outlets into open air;
There the fierce winds his tender force assail,
And beat him downward to his first repair.
The winds, like crafty courtesans, withheld
His flames from burning but to blow them more:
And, every fresh attempt, he is repelled
With faint denials, weaker than before.
And now, no longer letted of his prey,
He leaps up at it with enraged desire,
O'erlooks the neighbours with a wide survey,
And nods at every house his threatening fire.
The ghosts of traitors from the Bridge descend,
With bold fanatic spectres to rejoice;
About the fire into a dance they bend,
And sing their sabbath notes with feeble voice1.
Our guardian angel saw them where they sate,
Above the palace of our slumbering King;
He sighed, abandoning his charge to Fate,
And drooping oft looked back upon the wing.
At length the crackling noise and dreadful blaze
Called up some waking lover to the sight;
And long it was ere he the rest could raise,
Whose heavy eyelids yet were full of night.
The next to danger, hot pursued by fate,
Half-clothed, half-naked, hastily retire;
And frighted mothers strike their breasts too late
For helpless infants left amidst the fire.
Their cries soon waken all the dwellers near;
Now murmuring noises rise in every street;
The more remote run stumbling with their fear,
And in the dark men justle as they meet.
So weary bees in little cells repose;
But if night-robbers lift the well-stored hive,
An humming through their waxen city grows,
And out upon each other's wings they drive.
1 The heads of persons executed for treason were displayed on London Bridge.
Now streets grow thronged and busy as by day;
Some run for buckets to the hallowed quire;
Some cut the pipes, and some the engines play,
And some more bold mount ladders to the fire.
In vain; for from the east a Belgian wind
His hostile breath through the dry rafters sent; The flames impelled soon left their foes behind, And forward with a wanton fury went.
A key of fire ran all along the shore,
And lightened all the river with a blaze;
The wakened tides began again to roar,
And wondering fish in shining waters gaze.
Old Father Thames raised up his reverend head,
But feared the fate of Simois 2 would return;
Deep in his ooze he sought his sedgy bed,
And shrank his waters back into his urn.
The fire meantime walks in a broader gross3;
To either hand his wings he opens wide;
He wades the streets, and straight he reaches cross,
And plays his longing flames on the other side.
At first they warm, then scorch, and then they take;
Now with long necks from side to side they feed;
At length, grown strong, their mother-fire forsake,
And a new colony of flames succeed.
To every nobler portion of the town
The curling billows roll their restless tide;
In parties now they straggle up and down,
As armies unopposed for prey divide.
One mighty squadron, with a sidewind sped,
Through narrow lanes his cumbered fire does haste, By powerful charms of gold and silver led
The Lombard bankers and the Change to waste.
8 2 See Iliad, bk. xxi (of the Xanthos).
Another backward to the Tower would go,
And slowly eats his way against the wind;
But the main body of the marching foe
Against the imperial palace is designed.
Now day appears; and with the day the King,
Whose early care had robbed him of his rest;
Far off the cracks of falling houses ring,
And shrieks of subjects pierce his tender breast.
Near as he draws, thick harbingers of smoke
With gloomy pillars cover all the place;
Whose little intervals of night are broke
By sparks that drive against his sacred face.
More than his guards his sorrows made him known,
And pious tears which down his cheeks did shower;
The wretched in his grief forgot their own;
So much the pity of a king has power.
He wept the flames of what he loved so well,
And what so well had merited his love;
For never prince in grace did more excel,
Or royal city more in duty strove.
[From Absalom and Achitophel, Part I; 1681.]
Of these the false Achitophel1 was first,
A name to all succeeding ages curst:
For close designs and crooked counsels fit,
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit,
Restless, unfixed in principles and place,
In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace;
A fiery soul which, working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy body to decay
And o'er-informed the tenement of clay.
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