Transfusing into them their sordid soul.
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!
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_;
The fish ofttimes the burgher dispossessed,
And sate, not as a meat, but as a guest;
And oft the Tritons and the sea-nymphs tan
Whole shoals of Dutch served up as Caliban,
And, as they over the new level ranged,
For pickled herring pickled Heeren changed.
Therefore necessity, that first made kings,
Something like government among them brings;
And as among the blind the blinkard reigns
So rules among the drowned he that drains;
Who best could know to pump on earth a 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 dykegrave, unperceived, invades
The power, and grows, as 't were, a king of spades.
I have cited this long passage not only because Marvell (both in his
serious and comic verse) is a great favorite of mine, but because it is
as good an illustration as I know how to find of that fancy flying off
into extravagance, and that nice compactness of expression, that
constitute genuine wit.
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