Classic Poem

CANTO I .

Aid me, Bellona! while the dreadful fight
Betwixt a nation and two whales I write.
Seas stained with gore I sing, adventurous toil,
And how these monsters did disarm an isle.
Bermudas, walled with rocks, who does not know?
That happy island where huge lemons grow,
And orange trees, which golden fruit do bear,
The Hesperian garden boasts of none so fair;
Where shining pearl, coral, and many a pound,
On the rich shore, of ambergris is found.
The lofty cedar, which to heaven aspires,
The prince of trees! is fuel for their fires;
The smoke by which their loaded spits do turn,
For incense might on sacred altars burn;
Their private roofs on odorous timber borne,
Such as might palaces for kings adorn.
The sweet palmettos a new Bacchus yield,
With leaves as ample as the broadest shield,
Under the shadow of whose friendly boughs
They sit, carousing where their liquor grows.
Figs there unplanted through the fields do grow,
Such as fierce Cato did the Romans show,
With the rare fruit inviting them to spoil
Carthage, the mistress of so rich a soil.
The naked rocks are not unfruitful there,
But, at some constant seasons, every year,
Their barren tops with luscious food abound,
And with the eggs of various fowls are crowned.
Tobacco is the worst of things, which they
To English landlords, as their tribute, pay.
Such is the mould, that the blessed tenant feeds
On precious fruits, and pays his rent in weeds.
With candied plantains, and the juicy pine,
On choicest melons, and sweet grapes, they dine,
And with potatoes fat their wanton swine.
Nature these cates with such a lavish hand
Pours out among them, that our coarser land
Tastes of that bounty, and does cloth return,
Which not for warmth, but ornament, is worn;
For the kind spring, which but salutes us here,
Inhabits there, and courts them all the year.
Ripe fruits and blossoms on the same trees live;
At once they promise what at once they give.
So sweet the air, so moderate the clime,
None sickly lives, or dies before his time.
Heaven sure has kept this spot of earth uncursed,
To show how all things were created first.
The tardy plants in our cold orchards placed,
Reserve their fruit for the next age's taste.
There a small grain in some few months will be
A firm, a lofty, and a spacious tree.
The palma-christi, and the fair papa,
Now but a seed, (preventing nature's law)
In half the circle of the hasty year
Project a shade, and lovely fruit do wear.
And as their trees, in our dull region set,
But faintly grow, and no perfection get;
So, in this northern tract, our hoarser throats,
Utter unripe and ill-constrained notes,
Where the supporter of the poets' style,
Phaebus, on them eternally does smile
Oh! how I long my careless limbs to lay
Under the plantain's shade, and all the day
With amorous airs my fancy entertain,
Invoke the Muses, and improve my vein!
No passion there in my free breast should move,
None but the sweet and best of passions, love.
There while I sing, if gentle love be by,
That tunes my lute, and winds the strings so high,
With the sweet sound of Sacharissa's name
I'll make the listening savages grow tame. — —
But while I do these pleasing dreams indite,
I am diverted from the promised fight.

CANTO II .

Though rocks so high about this island rise,
That well they may the numerous Turk despise,
Yet is no human fate exempt from fear,
Which shakes their hearts, while through the isle they hear
A lasting noise, as horrid and as loud
As thunder makes before it breaks the cloud
Three days they dread this murmur, ere they know
From what blind cause the unwonted sound may grow.
At length two monsters of unequal size,
Hard by the shore, a fisherman espies;
Two mighty whales! which swelling seas had tossed,
And left them prisoners on the rocky coast.
One as a mountain vast; and with her came
A cub, not much inferior to his dam.
Here in a pool, among the rocks engaged,
They roared, like lions caught in toils, and raged.
The man knew what they were, who heretofore
Had seen the like lie murdered on the shore;
By the wild fury of some tempest cast,
The fate of ships, and shipwrecked men, to taste.
As careless dames, whom wine and sleep betray
To frantic dreams, their infants overlay:
So there, sometimes, the raging ocean fails,
And her own brood exposes; when the whales
Against sharp rocks, like reeling vessels quashed,
Though huge as mountains, are in pieces dashed;
Along the shore their dreadful limbs lie scattered,
Like hills with earthquakes shaken torn, and shattered.
Hearts sure of brass they had, who tempted first
Rude seas that spare not what themselves have nursed.
The welcome news through all the nation spread,
To sudden joy and hope converts their dread;
What lately was their public terror, they
Behold with glad eyes as a certain prey;
Dispose already of the untaken spoil,
And, as the purchase of their future toil,
These share the bones, and they divide the oil.
So was the huntsman by the bear oppressed,
Whose hide he sold — before he caught the beast!
They man their boats, and all their young men arm
With whatsoever may the monsters harm;
Pikes, halberts, spits, and darts that wound so far,
The tools of peace, and instruments of war.
Now was the time for vigorous lads to show
What love, or honour, could invite them to;
A goodly theatre; where rocks are round
With reverend age, and lovely lasses, crowned.
Such was the lake which held this dreadful pair,
Within the bounds of noble Warwick's share;
Warwick's bold Earl! than which no title bears
A greater sound among our British peers;
And worthy he the memory to renew,
The fate and honour to that title due,
Whose brave adventures have transferred his name,
And through the new world spread his growing fame
But how they fought, and what their valour gained,
Shall in another Canto be contained.

CANTO III .

T HE boat which on the first assault did go,
Struck with a harping-iron the younger foe;
Who, when he felt his side so rudely gored,
Loud as the sea that nourished him be roared.
As a broad bream, to please some curious taste,
While yet alive, in boiling water cast,
Vexed with unwonted heat, bounds, flings about
The scorching brass, and hurls the liquor out;
So with the barbed javelin stung, he raves,
And scourges with his tail the suffering waves.
Like Spenser's Talus with his iron flail,
He threatens ruin with his ponderous tail;
Dissolving at one stroke the battered boat,
And down the men fall drenched in the moat;
With every fierce encounter they are forced
To quit their boats, and fare like men unhorsed.
The bigger whale like some huge carrack lay,
Which wanteth sea-room with her foes to play;
Slowly she swims; and when, provoked she would
Advance her tail, her head salutes the mud;
The shallow water doth her force infringe,
And renders vain her tail's impetuous swinge;
The shining steel her tender sides receive,
And there, like bees, they all their weapons leave.
This sees the cub, and does himself oppose
Betwixt his cumbered mother and her foes;
With desperate courage he receives her wounds,
And men and boats his active tail confounds.
Their forces joined, the seas with billows fill,
And make a tempest, though the winds be still.
Now would the men with half their hoped prey
Be well content, and wish this cub away;
Their wish they have: he (to direct his dam
Unto the gap through which they thither came)
Before her swims, and quits the hostile lake,
A prisoner there, but for his mother's sake.
She, by the rocks compelled to stay behind,
Is by the vastness of her bulk confined.
They shout for joy! and now on her alone
Their fury falls, and all their darts are thrown.
Their lances spent, one bolder than the rest,
With his broad sword provoked the sluggish beast;
Her oily side devours both blade and haft,
And there his steel the bold Bermudian left.
Courage the rest from his example take,
And now they change the colour of the lake;
Blood flows in rivers from her wounded side,
As if they would prevent the tardy tide,
And raise the flood to that propitious height,
As might convey her from this fatal strait.
She swims in blood, and blood does spouting throw
To heaven, that heaven men's cruelties might know.
Their fixed javelins in her side she wears,
And on her back a grove of pikes appears;
You would have thought, had you the monster seen
Thus dressed, she had another island been.
Roaring she tears the air with such a noise,
As well resembled the conspiring voice
Of routed armies, when the field is won,
To reach the ears of her escaped son.
He, though a league removed from the foe,
Hastes to her aid; the pious Trojan so,
Neglecting for Creusa's life his own,
Repeats the danger of the burning town.
The men, amazed, blush to see the seed
Of monsters human piety exceed.
Well proves this kindness, what the Grecians sung,
That Love's bright mother from the ocean sprung.
Their courage droops, and, hopeless now, they wish
For composition with the unconquered fish;
So she their weapons would restore again.
Through rocks they'd hew her passage to the main.
But how instructed in each other's mind?
Or what commerce can men with monsters find?
Not daring to approach their wounded foe,
Whom her courageous son protected so,
They charge their muskets, and, with hot desire
Of fell revenge, renew the fight with fire;
Standing aloof, with lead they bruise the scales,
And tear the flesh of the incensed whales.
But no success their fierce endeavours found,
Nor this way could they give one fatal wound.
Now to their fort they are about to send
For the loud engines which their isle defend;
But what those pieces framed to batter walls,
Would have effected on those mighty whales,
Great Neptune will not have us know, who sends
A tide so high that it relieves his friends.
And thus they parted with exchange of harms;
Much blood the monsters lost, and they their arms.