your ears to flee,
  Till you were shrivell’d to dust, and your cold land
  Parch’t to a drought beyond the Libyan sand! 
  But ’tis reserv’d till Heaven plague you worse;
  The objects of an epidemic curse,
  First, may your brethren, to whose viler ends
  Your power hath bawded, cease to be your friends;
  And prompted by the dictate of their reason;
  And may their jealousies increase and breed
  Till they confine your steps beyond the Tweed. 
  In foreign nations may your loathed name be
  A stigmatizing brand of infamy;
  Till forced by general hate you cease to roam
  The world, and for a plague live at home: 
  Till you resume your poverty, and be
  Reduced to beg where none can be so free
  To grant:  and may your scabby land be all
  Translated to a generall hospital. 
  Let not the sun afford one gentle ray,
  To give you comfort of a summer’s day;
  But, as a guerdon for your traitorous war,
  Love cherished only by the northern star. 
  No stranger deign to visit your rude coast,
  And be, to all but banisht men, as lost. 
  And such in heightening of the indiction due
  Let provok’d princes send them all to you. 
  Your State a chaos be, where not the law,
  But power, your lives and liberties may give. 
  No subject ’mongst you keep a quiet breast
  But each man strive through blood to be the best;
  Till, for those miseries on us you’ve brought
  By your own sword our just revenge be wrought. 
  To sum up all ... let your religion be
  As your allegiance—­maskt hypocrisie
  Until when Charles shall be composed in dust
  Perfum’d with epithets of good and just. 
  He saved—­incensed Heaven may have forgot—­
  To afford one act of mercy to a Scot: 
  Unless that Scot deny himself and do
  What’s easier far—­Renounce his nation too.

JOHN DRYDEN.

(1631-1700.)

XVIII.  SATIRE ON THE DUTCH.

    Originally printed in broadside form, being written in the year
    1662.  It was bitterly resented by the Dutch.

  As needy gallants, in the scriv’ner’s hands,
  Court the rich knaves that gripe their mortgag’d lands;
  The first fat buck of all the season’d sent,
  And keeper takes no fee in compliment;
  The dotage of some Englishmen is such,
  To fawn on those, who ruin them, the Dutch. 
  They shall have all, rather than make a war
  With those, who of the same religion are. 
  The Straits, the Guinea-trade, the herrings too;
  Nay, to keep friendship, they shall pickle you. 
  Some are resolv’d, not to find out the cheat,
  But, cuckold-like, love them that do the feat. 
  What injuries soe’er upon us fall,
  Yet still the same religion answers all. 
  Religion wheedl’d us to civil war,
  Drew English blood, and Dutchmen’s