10 Best Famous Bays Poems

Here is a collection of the top 10 all-time best famous Bays poems. This is a select list of the best famous Bays poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Bays poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of bays poems.

• All Famous Bays Poems

 In the mustardseed sun,
By full tilt river and switchback sea
 Where the cormorants scud,
In his house on stilts high among beaks
 And palavers of birds
This sandgrain day in the bent bay's grave
 He celebrates and spurns
His driftwood thirty-fifth wind turned age;
 Herons spire and spear.

 Under and round him go
Flounders, gulls, on their cold, dying trails,
 Doing what they are told,
Curlews aloud in the congered waves
 Work at their ways to death,
And the rhymer in the long tongued room,
 Who tolls his birthday bell,
Toils towards the ambush of his wounds;
 Herons, steeple stemmed, bless.

 In the thistledown fall,
He sings towards anguish; finches fly
 In the claw tracks of hawks
On a seizing sky; small fishes glide
 Through wynds and shells of drowned
Ship towns to pastures of otters. He
 In his slant, racking house
And the hewn coils of his trade perceives
 Herons walk in their shroud,

 The livelong river's robe
Of minnows wreathing around their prayer;
 And far at sea he knows,
Who slaves to his crouched, eternal end
 Under a serpent cloud,
Dolphins dive in their turnturtle dust,
 The rippled seals streak down
To kill and their own tide daubing blood
 Slides good in the sleek mouth.

 In a cavernous, swung
Wave's silence, wept white angelus knells.
 Thirty-five bells sing struck
On skull and scar where his loves lie wrecked,
 Steered by the falling stars.
And to-morrow weeps in a blind cage
 Terror will rage apart
Before chains break to a hammer flame
 And love unbolts the dark

 And freely he goes lost
In the unknown, famous light of great
 And fabulous, dear God.
Dark is a way and light is a place,
 Heaven that never was
Nor will be ever is always true,
 And, in that brambled void,
Plenty as blackberries in the woods
 The dead grow for His joy.

 There he might wander bare
With the spirits of the horseshoe bay
 Or the stars' seashore dead,
Marrow of eagles, the roots of whales
 And wishbones of wild geese,
With blessed, unborn God and His Ghost,
 And every soul His priest,
Gulled and chanter in young Heaven's fold
 Be at cloud quaking peace,

 But dark is a long way.
He, on the earth of the night, alone
 With all the living, prays,
Who knows the rocketing wind will blow
 The bones out of the hills,
And the scythed boulders bleed, and the last
 Rage shattered waters kick
Masts and fishes to the still quick starts,
 Faithlessly unto Him

 Who is the light of old
And air shaped Heaven where souls grow wild
 As horses in the foam:
Oh, let me midlife mourn by the shrined
 And druid herons' vows
The voyage to ruin I must run,
 Dawn ships clouted aground,
Yet, though I cry with tumbledown tongue,
 Count my blessings aloud:

 Four elements and five
Senses, and man a spirit in love
 Tangling through this spun slime
To his nimbus bell cool kingdom come
 And the lost, moonshine domes,
And the sea that hides his secret selves
 Deep in its black, base bones,
Lulling of spheres in the seashell flesh,
 And this last blessing most,

 That the closer I move
To death, one man through his sundered hulks,
 The louder the sun blooms
And the tusked, ramshackling sea exults;
 And every wave of the way
And gale I tackle, the whole world then,
 With more triumphant faith
That ever was since the world was said,
 Spins its morning of praise,

 I hear the bouncing hills
Grow larked and greener at berry brown
 Fall and the dew larks sing
Taller this thunderclap spring, and how
 More spanned with angles ride
The mansouled fiery islands! Oh,
 Holier then their eyes,
And my shining men no more alone
 As I sail out to die.

 After seeing at Boston the statue of Robert Gould Shaw, killed while storming Fort Wagner, July 18, 1863, at the head of the first enlisted ***** regiment, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts.


I 

Before the solemn bronze Saint Gaudens made 
To thrill the heedless passer's heart with awe, 
And set here in the city's talk and trade 
To the good memory of Robert Shaw, 
This bright March morn I stand, 
And hear the distant spring come up the land; 
Knowing that what I hear is not unheard 
Of this boy soldier and his ***** band, 
For all their gaze is fixed so stern ahead, 
For all the fatal rhythm of their tread. 
The land they died to save from death and shame 
Trembles and waits, hearing the spring's great name, 
And by her pangs these resolute ghosts are stirred. 


II 

Through street and mall the tides of people go 
Heedless; the trees upon the Common show 
No hint of green; but to my listening heart 
The still earth doth impart 
Assurance of her jubilant emprise, 
And it is clear to my long-searching eyes 
That love at last has might upon the skies. 
The ice is runneled on the little pond; 
A telltale patter drips from off the trees; 
The air is touched with southland spiceries, 
As if but yesterday it tossed the frond 
Of pendant mosses where the live-oaks grow 
Beyond Virginia and the Carolines, 
Or had its will among the fruits and vines 
Of aromatic isles asleep beyond 
Florida and the Gulf of Mexico. 


III 

Soon shall the Cape Ann children shout in glee, 
Spying the arbutus, spring's dear recluse; 
Hill lads at dawn shall hearken the wild goose 
Go honking northward over Tennessee; 
West from Oswego to Sault Sainte-Marie, 
And on to where the Pictured Rocks are hung, 
And yonder where, gigantic, wilful, young, 
Chicago sitteth at the northwest gates, 
With restless violent hands and casual tongue 
Moulding her mighty fates, 
The Lakes shall robe them in ethereal sheen; 
And like a larger sea, the vital green 
Of springing wheat shall vastly be outflung 
Over Dakota and the prairie states. 
By desert people immemorial 
On Arizonan mesas shall be done 
Dim rites unto the thunder and the sun; 
Nor shall the primal gods lack sacrifice 
More splendid, when the white Sierras call 
Unto the Rockies straightway to arise 
And dance before the unveiled ark of the year, 
Sounding their windy cedars as for shawms, 
Unrolling rivers clear 
For flutter of broad phylacteries; 
While Shasta signals to Alaskan seas 
That watch old sluggish glaciers downward creep 
To fling their icebergs thundering from the steep, 
And Mariposa through the purple calms 
Gazes at far Hawaii crowned with palms 
Where East and West are met, -- 
A rich seal on the ocean's bosom set 
To say that East and West are twain, 
With different loss and gain: 
The Lord hath sundered them; let them be sundered yet. 


IV 

Alas! what sounds are these that come 
Sullenly over the Pacific seas, -- 
Sounds of ignoble battle, striking dumb 
The season's half-awakened ecstasies? 
Must I be humble, then, 
Now when my heart hath need of pride? 
Wild love falls on me from these sculptured men; 
By loving much the land for which they died 
I would be justified. 
My spirit was away on pinions wide 
To soothe in praise of her its passionate mood 
And ease it of its ache of gratitude. 
Too sorely heavy is the debt they lay 
On me and the companions of my day. 
I would remember now 
My country's goodliness, make sweet her name. 
Alas! what shade art thou 
Of sorrow or of blame 
Liftest the lyric leafage from her brow, 
And pointest a slow finger at her shame? 


V 

Lies! lies! It cannot be! The wars we wage 
Are noble, and our battles still are won 
By justice for us, ere we lift the gage. 
We have not sold our loftiest heritage. 
The proud republic hath not stooped to cheat 
And scramble in the market-place of war; 
Her forehead weareth yet its solemn star. 
Here is her witness: this, her perfect son, 
This delicate and proud New England soul 
Who leads despisèd men, with just-unshackled feet, 
Up the large ways where death and glory meet, 
To show all peoples that our shame is done, 
That once more we are clean and spirit-whole. 


VI 

Crouched in the sea fog on the moaning sand 
All night he lay, speaking some simple word 
From hour to hour to the slow minds that heard, 
Holding each poor life gently in his hand 
And breathing on the base rejected clay 
Till each dark face shone mystical and grand 
Against the breaking day; 
And lo, the shard the potter cast away 
Was grown a fiery chalice crystal-fine 
Fulfilled of the divine 
Great wine of battle wrath by God's ring-finger stirred. 
Then upward, where the shadowy bastion loomed 
Huge on the mountain in the wet sea light, 
Whence now, and now, infernal flowerage bloomed, 
Bloomed, burst, and scattered down its deadly seed, -- 
They swept, and died like freemen on the height, 
Like freemen, and like men of noble breed; 
And when the battle fell away at night 
By hasty and contemptuous hands were thrust 
Obscurely in a common grave with him 
The fair-haired keeper of their love and trust. 
Now limb doth mingle with dissolvèd limb 
In nature's busy old democracy 
To flush the mountain laurel when she blows 
Sweet by the southern sea, 
And heart with crumbled heart climbs in the rose: -- 
The untaught hearts with the high heart that knew 
This mountain fortress for no earthly hold 
Of temporal quarrel, but the bastion old 
Of spiritual wrong, 
Built by an unjust nation sheer and strong, 
Expugnable but by a nation's rue 
And bowing down before that equal shrine 
By all men held divine, 
Whereof his band and he were the most holy sign. 


VII 

O bitter, bitter shade! 
Wilt thou not put the scorn 
And instant tragic question from thine eye? 
Do thy dark brows yet crave 
That swift and angry stave -- 
Unmeet for this desirous morn -- 
That I have striven, striven to evade? 
Gazing on him, must I not deem they err 
Whose careless lips in street and shop aver 
As common tidings, deeds to make his cheek 
Flush from the bronze, and his dead throat to speak? 
Surely some elder singer would arise, 
Whose harp hath leave to threaten and to mourn 
Above this people when they go astray. 
Is Whitman, the strong spirit, overworn? 
Has Whittier put his yearning wrath away? 
I will not and I dare not yet believe! 
Though furtively the sunlight seems to grieve, 
And the spring-laden breeze 
Out of the gladdening west is sinister 
With sounds of nameless battle overseas; 
Though when we turn and question in suspense 
If these things be indeed after these ways, 
And what things are to follow after these, 
Our fluent men of place and consequence 
Fumble and fill their mouths with hollow phrase, 
Or for the end-all of deep arguments 
Intone their dull commercial liturgies -- 
I dare not yet believe! My ears are shut! 
I will not hear the thin satiric praise 
And muffled laughter of our enemies, 
Bidding us never sheathe our valiant sword 
Till we have changed our birthright for a gourd 
Of wild pulse stolen from a barbarian's hut; 
Showing how wise it is to cast away 
The symbols of our spiritual sway, 
That so our hands with better ease 
May wield the driver's whip and grasp the jailer's keys. 


VIII 

Was it for this our fathers kept the law? 
This crown shall crown their struggle and their ruth? 
Are we the eagle nation Milton saw 
Mewing its mighty youth, 
Soon to possess the mountain winds of truth, 
And be a swift familiar of the sun 
Where aye before God's face his trumpets run? 
Or have we but the talons and the maw, 
And for the abject likeness of our heart 
Shall some less lordly bird be set apart? -- 
Some gross-billed wader where the swamps are fat? 
Some gorger in the sun? Some prowler with the bat? 


IX 

Ah no! 
We have not fallen so. 
We are our fathers' sons: let those who lead us know! 
'T was only yesterday sick Cuba's cry 
Came up the tropic wind, "Now help us, for we die!" 
Then Alabama heard, 
And rising, pale, to Maine and Idaho 
Shouted a burning word. 
Proud state with proud impassioned state conferred, 
And at the lifting of a hand sprang forth, 
East, west, and south, and north, 
Beautiful armies. Oh, by the sweet blood and young 
Shed on the awful hill slope at San Juan, 
By the unforgotten names of eager boys 
Who might have tasted girls' love and been stung 
With the old mystic joys 
And starry griefs, now the spring nights come on, 
But that the heart of youth is generous, -- 
We charge you, ye who lead us, 
Breathe on their chivalry no hint of stain! 
Turn not their new-world victories to gain! 
One least leaf plucked for chaffer from the bays 
Of their dear praise, 
One jot of their pure conquest put to hire, 
The implacable republic will require; 
With clamor, in the glare and gaze of noon, 
Or subtly, coming as a thief at night, 
But surely, very surely, slow or soon 
That insult deep we deeply will requite. 
Tempt not our weakness, our cupidity! 
For save we let the island men go free, 
Those baffled and dislaureled ghosts 
Will curse us from the lamentable coasts 
Where walk the frustrate dead. 
The cup of trembling shall be drainèd quite, 
Eaten the sour bread of astonishment, 
With ashes of the hearth shall be made white 
Our hair, and wailing shall be in the tent; 
Then on your guiltier head 
Shall our intolerable self-disdain 
Wreak suddenly its anger and its pain; 
For manifest in that disastrous light 
We shall discern the right 
And do it, tardily. -- O ye who lead, 
Take heed! 
Blindness we may forgive, but baseness we will smite.

1

To sing of wars, of captains, and of kings,
Of cities founded, commonwealths begun,
For my mean pen, are too superior things,
And how they all, or each, their dates have run
Let poets, and historians set these forth,
My obscure verse shall not so dim their worth.


2

But when my wond'ring eyes, and envious heart,
Great Bartas' sugared lines do but read o'er,
Fool, I do grudge the Muses did not part
'Twixt him and me that overfluent store;
A Bartas can do what a Bartas will,
But simple I, according to my skill.


3

From schoolboy's tongue, no rhetoric we expect,
Nor yet a sweet consort, from broken strings,
Nor perfect beauty, where's a main defect;
My foolish, broken, blemished Muse so sings;
And this to mend, alas, no art is able,
'Cause nature made it so irreparable.


4

Nor can I, like that fluent sweet-tongued Greek
Who lisped at first, speak afterwards more plain.
By art, he gladly found what he did seek,
A full requital of his striving pain:
Art can do much, but this maxim's most sure.
A weak or wounded brain admits no cure.


5

I am obnoxious to each carping tongue,
Who says my hand a needle better fits;
A poet's pen all scorn I should thus wrong;
For such despite they cast on female wits:
If what I do prove well, it won't advance,
They'll say it's stolen, or else it was by chance.


6

But sure the antique Greeks were far more mild,
Else of our sex, why feigned they those nine,
And poesy made Calliope's own child?
So 'mongst the rest they placed the arts divine:
But this weak knot they will full soon untie,
The Greeks did nought, but play the fool and lie.


7

Let Greeks be Greeks, and women what they are,
Men have precedency, and still excel;
It is but vain, unjustly to wage war;
Men can do best, and women know it well;
Preeminence in each and all is yours,
Yet grant some small acknowledgement of ours.


8

And oh, ye high flown quills that soar the skies,
And ever with your prey, still catch your praise,
If e'er you deign these lowly lines your eyes,
Give wholesome parsley wreath, I ask no bays:
This mean and unrefinèd stuff of mine,
Will make your glistering gold but more to shine.

 Begin, my muse, the imitative lay, 
Aonian doxies sound the thrumming string; 
Attempt no number of the plaintive Gay, 
Let me like midnight cats, or Collins sing. 
If in the trammels of the doleful line 
The bounding hail, or drilling rain descend; 
Come, brooding Melancholy, pow'r divine, 
And ev'ry unform'd mass of words amend. 

Now the rough goat withdraws his curling horns, 
And the cold wat'rer twirls his circling mop: 
Swift sudden anguish darts thro' alt'ring corns, 
And the spruce mercer trembles in his shop. 

Now infant authors, madd'ning for renown, 
Extend the plume, and him about the stage, 
Procure a benefit, amuse the town, 
And proudly glitter in a title page. 

Now, wrapt in ninefold fur, his squeamish grace 
Defies the fury of the howling storm; 
And whilst the tempest whistles round his face, 
Exults to find his mantled carcase warm. 

Now rumbling coaches furious drive along, 
Full of the majesty of city dames, 
Whose jewels sparkling in the gaudy throng, 
Raise strange emotions and invidious flames. 

Now Merit, happy in the calm of place, 
To mortals as a highlander appears, 
And conscious of the excellence of lace, 
With spreading frogs and gleaming spangles glares. 

Whilst Envy, on a tripod seated nigh, 
In form a shoe-boy, daubs the valu'd fruit, 
And darting lightnings from his vengeful eye, 
Raves about Wilkes, and politics, and Bute. 

Now Barry, taller than a grenadier, 
Dwindles into a stripling of eighteen; 
Or sabled in Othello breaks the ear, 
Exerts his voice, and totters to the scene. 

Now Foote, a looking-glass for all mankind, 
Applies his wax to personal defects; 
But leaves untouch'd the image of the mind, 
His art no mental quality reflects. 

Now Drury's potent kind extorts applause, 
And pit, box, gallery, echo, "how divine!" 
Whilst vers'd in all the drama's mystic laws, 
His graceful action saves the wooden line. 

Now-- but what further can the muses sing? 
Now dropping particles of water fall; 
Now vapours riding on the north wind's wing, 
With transitory darkness shadow all. 

Alas! how joyless the descriptive theme, 
When sorrow on the writer's quiet preys 
And like a mouse in Cheshire cheese supreme, 
Devours the substance of the less'ning bays. 

Come, February, lend thy darkest sky. 
There teach the winter'd muse with clouds to soar; 
Come, February, lift the number high; 
Let the sharp strain like wind thro' alleys roar. 

Ye channels, wand'ring thro' the spacious street, 
In hollow murmurs roll the dirt along, 
With inundations wet the sabled feet, 
Whilst gouts responsive, join th'elegiac song. 

Ye damsels fair, whose silver voices shrill, 
Sound thro' meand'ring folds of Echo's horn; 
Let the sweet cry of liberty be still, 
No more let smoking cakes awake the morn. 

O, Winter! Put away the snowy pride; 
O, Spring! Neglect the cowslip and the bell; 
O, Summer! Throw thy pears and plums aside; 
O, Autumn! Bid the grape with poison swell. 

The pension'd muse of Johnson is no more! 
Drown'd in a butt of wine his genius lies; 
Earth! Ocean! Heav'n! The wond'rous loss deplore, 
The dregs of nature with her glory dies. 

What iron Stoic can suppress the tear; 
What sour reviewer read with vacant eye! 
What bard but decks his literary bier! 
Alas! I cannot sing-- I howl-- I cry--

 When I heard he had entered the harbor,
and circled the wharf for days,
I expected the worst: shallow water,

confusion, some accident to bring
the young humpback to grief. 
Don't they depend on a compass

lodged in the salt-flooded folds
of the brain, some delicate
musical mechanism to navigate

their true course? How many ways, 
in our century's late iron hours,
might we have led him to disaster?

That, in those days, was how
I'd come to see the world:
dark upon dark, any sense

of spirit an embattled flame
sparked against wind-driven rain
till pain snuffed it out. I thought,

 This is what experience gives us ,
and I moved carefully through my life
while I waited. . . Enough,

it wasn't that way at all. The whale
—exuberant, proud maybe, playful,
like the early music of Beethoven—

cruised the footings for smelts
clustered near the pylons
in mercury flocks. He

(do I have the gender right?)
would negotiate the rusty hulls
of the Portuguese fishing boats

—Holy Infant, Little Marie—
with what could only be read
as pleasure, coming close

then diving, trailing on the surface
big spreading circles
until he'd breach, thrilling us

with the release of pressured breath,
and the bulk of his sleek young head
—a wet black leather sofa

already barnacled with ghostly lice—
and his elegant and unlikely mouth,
and the marvelous afterthought of the flukes,

and the way his broad flippers
resembled a pair of clownish gloves
or puppet hands, looming greenish white

beneath the bay's clouded sheen. 
When he had consumed his pleasure
of the shimmering swarm, his pleasure, perhaps,

in his own admired performance,
he swam out the harbor mouth,
into the Atlantic. And though grief

has seemed to me itself a dim,
salt suspension in which I've moved,
blind thing, day by day,

through the wreckage, barely aware
of what I stumbled toward, even I
couldn't help but look

at the way this immense figure
graces the dark medium,
and shines so: heaviness

which is no burden to itself. 
What did you think, that joy
was some slight thing?

 "Let us now praise famous men"--
 Men of little showing-- 
For their work continueth, 
And their work continueth, 
Broad and deep continues,
 Greater then their knowing!

Western wind and open surge
 Took us from our mothers--
Flung us on a naked shore
(Twelve bleak houses by the shore.
Seven summers by the shore! )
 'Mid two hundred brothers.

There we met with famous men
 Set in office o'er us;
And they beat on us with rods-- 
Faithfully with many rods--
Daily beat us on with rods,
 For the love they bore us!

Out of Egypt unto Troy--
 Over Himalaya--
Far and sure our bands have gone--
Hy-Brazil or Babylon,
Islands of the Southern Run,
 And Cities of Cathaia!

And we all praise famous men--
 Ancients of the College;
For they taught us common sense--
Tried to teach us common sense--
Truth and God's Own Common Sense,
 Which is more than knowledge!

Each degree of Latitude
 Strung about Creation
Seeth one or more of us
(Of one muster each of us),
Diligent in that he does,
 Keen in his vocation.

This we learned from famous men,
 Knowing not its uses,
When they showed, in daily work--
Man must finish off his work--
Right or wrong, his daily work--
 And without excuses.


Servant of the Staff and chain,
 Mine and fuse and grapnel--
Some, before the face of Kings,
Stand before the face of Kings;
Bearing gifts to divers Kings--
 Gifts of case and shrapnel.

This we learned from famous men
 Teaching in our borders,
Who declared it was best,
Safest, easiest, and best--
Expeditious, wise, and best--
 To obey your orders.

Some beneath the further stars
 Bear the greater burden:
Set to serve the lands they rule,
(Save he serve no man may rule ),
Serve and love the lands they rule;
 Seeking praise nor guerdon.

This we learned from famous men,
 Knowing not we learned it.
Only, as the years went by--
Lonely, as the years went by--
Far from help as years went by,
 Plainer we discerned it.

Wherefore praise we famous men
 From whose bays we borrow--
They that put aside To-day--
All the joys of their To-day--
And with toil of their To-day
 Bought for us To-morrow!

Bless and praise we famous men--
 Men of little showing--
For their work continueth,
And their work continueth,
Broad and deep continueth,
 Great beyond their knowing!

 So stick up ivy and the bays,
And then restore the heathen ways.
Green will remind you of the spring,
Though this great day denies the thing.
And mortifies the earth and all
But your wild revels, and loose hall.
Could you wear flowers, and roses strow
Blushing upon your breasts' warm snow,
That very dress your lightness will
Rebuke, and wither at the ill.
The brightness of this day we owe
Not unto music, masque, nor show:
Nor gallant furniture, nor plate;
But to the manger's mean estate.
His life while here, as well as birth,
Was but a check to pomp and mirth;
And all man's greatness you may see
Condemned by His humility.
Then leave your open house and noise,
To welcome Him with holy joys,
And the poor shepherd's watchfulness:
Whom light and hymns from heaven did bless.
What you abound with, cast abroad
To those that want, and ease your load.
Who empties thus, will bring more in;
But riot is both loss and sin.
Dress finely what comes not in sight,
And then you keep your Christmas right.

 Long Pont's apparitional
this warm spring morning,
the strand a blur of sandy light,


and the square white
of the lighthouse-separated from us
by the bay's ultramarine


as if it were nowhere
we could ever go-gleams
like a tower's ghost, hazing


into the rinsed blue of March,
our last outpost in the huge
indetermination of sea.


It seems cheerful enough,
in the strengthening sunlight,
fixed point accompanying our walk

along the shore. Sometimes I think
it's the where-we-will be,
only not yet, like some visible outcropping


of the afterlife. In the dark
its deeper invitations emerge:
green witness at night's end,


flickering margin of horizon,
marker of safety and limit.
but limitless, the way it calls us,

and where it seems to want us
to come, And so I invite it 
into the poem, to speak,

and the lighthouse says:
Here is the world you asked for,
gorgeous and opportune,

here is nine o'clock, harbor-wide,
and a glinting code: promise and warning.
The morning's the size of heaven.

What will you do with it?

 Consecrated to the Glorious Memory of His 
Most Serene and Renowned Highness, Oliver,
Late Lord Protector of This Commonwealth, etc.
(Oliver Cromwell)

Written After the Celebration of his Funeral 


1

And now 'tis time; for their officious haste, 
Who would before have borne him to the sky, 
Like eager Romans ere all rites were past 
Did let too soon the sacred eagle fly. 

2

Though our best notes are treason to his fame 
Join'd with the loud applause of public voice; 
Since Heav'n, what praise we offer to his name, 
Hath render'd too authentic by its choice; 

3

Though in his praise no arts can liberal be, 
Since they whose Muses have the highest flown 
Add not to his immortal memory, 
But do an act of friendship to their own; 

4

Yet 'tis our duty and our interest too 
Such monuments as we can build to raise, 
Lest all the world prevent what we should do 
And claim a title in him by their praise. 

5

How shall I then begin, or where conclude 
To draw a fame so truly circular? 
For in a round what order can be shew'd, 
Where all the parts so equal perfect are? 

6

His grandeur he deriv'd from Heav'n alone, 
For he was great ere fortune made him so, 
And wars like mists that rise against the sun 
Made him but greater seem, not greater grown. 

7

No borrow'd bays his temples did adorn, 
But to our crown he did fresh jewels bring. 
Nor was his virtue poison'd soon as born 
With the too early thoughts of being king. 

8

Fortune (that easy mistress of the young 
But to her ancient servant coy and hard) 
Him at that age her favorites rank'd among 
When she her best-lov'd Pompey did discard. 

9

He, private, mark'd the faults of others' sway, 
And set as sea-marks for himself to shun, 
Not like rash monarchs who their youth betray 
By acts their age too late would wish undone. 

10

And yet dominion was not his design; 
We owe that blessing not to him but Heaven, 
Which to fair acts unsought rewards did join, 
Rewards that less to him than us were given. 

11

Our former chiefs like sticklers of the war 
First sought t'inflame the parties, then to poise, 
The quarrel lov'd, but did the cause abhor, 
And did not strike to hurt but make a noise. 

12

War, our consumption, was their gainfull trade; 
We inward bled whilst they prolong'd our pain; 
He fought to end our fighting and assay'd 
To stanch the blood by breathing of the vein. 

13

Swift and resistless through the land he pass'd 
Like that bold Greek who did the east subdue, 
And made to battles such heroic haste 
As if on wings of victory he flew. 

14

He fought secure of fortune as of fame, 
Till by new maps the island might be shown, 
Of conquests which he strew'd where'er he came 
Thick as a galaxy with stars is sown. 

15

His palms, though under weights they did not stand, 
Still thriv'd; no winter could his laurels fade; 
Heav'n in his portrait shew'd a workman's hand 
And drew it perfect yet without a shade. 

16

Peace was the prize of all his toils and care, 
Which war had banish'd and did now restore; 
Bologna's walls thus mounted in the air 
To seat themselves more surely than before. 

17

Her safety rescu'd Ireland to him owes, 
And treacherous Scotland, to no int'rest true, 
Yet bless'd that fate which did his arms dispose 
Her land to civilize as to subdue. 

18

Nor was he like those stars which only shine 
When to pale mariners they storms portend; 
He had his calmer influence, and his mien 
Did love and majesty together blend. 

19

'Tis true, his count'nance did imprint an awe, 
And naturally all souls to his did bow, 
As wands of divination downward draw 
And points to beds where sov'reign gold doth grow. 

20

When past all offerings to Feretrian Jove, 
He Mars depos'd and arms to gowns made yield; 
Successful councils did him soon approve 
As fit for close intrigues as open field. 

21

To suppliant Holland he vouchsaf'd a peace, 
Our once bold rival in the British main, 
Now tamely glad her unjust claim to cease 
And buy our friendship with her idol, gain. 

22

Fame of th' asserted sea through Europe blown 
Made France and Spain ambitious of his love; 
Each knew that side must conquer he would own, 
And for him fiercely as for empire strove. 

23

No sooner was the Frenchman's cause embrac'd 
Than the light monsieur the grave don outweigh'd; 
His fortune turn'd the scale where it was cast, 
Though Indian mines were in the other laid. 

24

When absent, yet we conquer'd in his right, 
For though some meaner artist's skill were shown 
In mingling colours, or in placing light, 
Yet still the fair designment was his own. 

25

For from all tempers he could service draw; 
The worth of each with its alloy he knew, 
And as the confidant of Nature saw 
How she complexions did divide and brew. 

26

Or he their single virtues did survey 
By intuition in his own large breast, 
Where all the rich ideas of them lay, 
That were the rule and measure to the rest. 

27

When such heroic virtue Heav'n sets out, 
The stars like Commons sullenly obey, 
Because it drains them when it comes about, 
And therefore is a tax they seldom pay. 

28

From this high spring our foreign conquests flow, 
Which yet more glorious triumphs do portend, 
Since their commencement to his arms they owe, 
If springs as high as fountains may ascend. 

29

He made us freemen of the continent 
Whom Nature did like captives treat before, 
To nobler preys the English lion sent, 
And taught him first in Belgian walks to roar. 

30

That old unquestion'd pirate of the land, 
Proud Rome, with dread the fate of Dunkirk heard, 
And trembling wish'd behind more Alps to stand, 
Although an Alexander were here guard. 

31

By his command we boldly cross'd the line 
And bravely fought where southern stars arise, 
We trac'd the far-fetch'd gold unto the mine 
And that which brib'd our fathers made our prize. 

32

Such was our prince; yet own'd a soul above 
The highest acts it could produce to show: 
Thus poor mechanic arts in public move 
Whilst the deep secrets beyond practice go. 

33

Nor di'd he when his ebbing fame went less, 
But when fresh laurels courted him to live; 
He seem'd but to prevent some new success, 
As if above what triumphs earth could give. 

34

His latest victories still thickest came, 
As near the center motion does increase, 
Till he, press'd down by his own weighty name, 
Did, like the vestal, under spoils decrease. 

35

But first the ocean as a tribute sent 
That giant prince of all her watery herd, 
And th' isle when her protecting genius went 
Upon his obsequies loud sighs conferr'd. 

36

No civil broils have since his death arose, 
But faction now by habit does obey, 
And wars have that respect for his repose, 
As winds for halycons when they breed at sea. 

37

His ashes in a peaceful urn shall rest; 
His name a great example stands to show 
How strangely high endeavours may be blest, 
Where piety and valour jointly go.

 Down with the rosemary, and so
Down with the bays and misletoe;
Down with the holly, ivy, all
Wherewith ye dress'd the Christmas hall;
That so the superstitious find
No one least branch there left behind;
For look, how many leaves there be
Neglected there, maids, trust to me,
So many goblins you shall see.