As metals mixed, the rich and base
Do both at equal values pass.
With these the ordinary debate
Was after news, and things of state,
Which way the dreadful comet went?
In sixty-four, and what it meant,
What nations yet are to bewail
The operations of its tail?
Why currents turn in seas of ice
Some thrice a day and some but twice;
And why the tides at night and noon
Court, like Caligula, the moon?
grass be green, or snow be white,
But only as they take the light?
Whether possessions of the devil,
Or mere temptations, are most evil?
What is't that makes all fountains still
Within the earth to run up hill,
But on the outside down again,
As if the attempt were made in vain ?
Or what's the strange magnetic cause
The steel, or Loadstone's drawn or draws
The star, the needle, which the stone
Has only been but touched upon?
Whether the North-star's influence
With both does hold intelligence;
(For red-hot iron, held towards the Pole
Turns of itself to't, when 'tis cool :)
What makes the body of the sun
That such a rapid course does run
To draw no tail behind through th' air,
As comets do, when they appear,
Which other planets cannot do
Because they do not burn, but glow?
Whether the moon be sea, or land,
Or charcoal; or a quench'd fire-brand ;
2 The comet which appeared on the 24th of December, 1664.
Or if the dark holes that appear
Are only bores, not cities there?
Whether the atmosphere turn round
And keep a just pace with the ground;
Or loiter lazily behind,
And clog the air with gusts of wind?
Or whether Crescents in the Wane,
(For so an author has it plain)
Do burn quite out, or wear away
Their snuffs upon the edge of day?
Whether the sea increase or waste,
And if it do, how long 'twill last :
Or if the sun approaches near
The earth, how soon it will be here?
These were the learned speculations
And all their constant occupations
To measure wind, and weigh the air,
And turn a circle to a square,
To make a powder of the sun,
By which all doctors should b' undone; To find the north-west passage out about;
Although the farthest way
If chemists from a rose's ashes,
Can raise a rose itself, in gases?
Whether the line of incidence
Rise from the object, or the sense?
To stew the elixir in a bath
Of Hope, Credulity, and Faith;
To explicate by subtle hints
The grain of diamonds and flints;
And, in the braying of an ass
Find out the treble and the bass;
If mares neigh alto, and a cow
A double diapason low.
OLLAND, that scarce deserves the name of land,
As but the off-scouring of the British sand;
And so much earth as was contributed
By English pilots, when they heaved the lead;
Or what by the ocean's slow alluvion fell,
Of shipwrecked cockle and the mussel-shell.
Glad then, as miners who have found the ore,
They, with mad labour, fish'd the land to shore;
And dived as desperately for each piece
Of earth, as if it had been of ambergreece;
Collecting anxiously small loads of clay,
Less than what building swallows bear away;
Or than those pills which sordid beetles rowl,
Transferring into them their dunghill 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;
Building their wat'ry Babel far more high
To catch the waves than those to scale the sky.
Yet still his claim the injured ocean layed,
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 ;1
A daily deluge over them does boil;
And earth and water play at level-coyl ;
The fish oft-times the burgher dispossessed,
And sat, not as a meat, but as a guest;
And oft the Tritons, and the sea-nymphs, saw
Whole shoals of Dutch served up for cabillau ;?
Or, as they over the new level ranged,
For pickled herring, pickled Heeren changed.
Nature, it seem'd, asham'd of her mistake,
Would throw their land away at duck and drake:
Therefore necessity, that first made kings,
Something like government among them brings;
For as with pigmys, who best kills the crane,
Among the hungry he that treasures grain,
Among the blind the one-eyed blinkard reigns,
So rules among the drowned he that drains.
Not who first sees the rising sun, commands;
But who could first discern the rising lands.
Who best could know to pump an earth so 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.
A free ocean; for which the Dutch jurists were then contending with the English.
STORY-WRITER of our sort
Historifies, in short,
Of one that may be reckoned
A Rodilard the Second,-
The Alexander of the cats,
The Attila, the scourge of rats,
Whose fierce and whiskered head
Among the latter spread,
A league around, its dread;
Who seemed, indeed, determined
The world should be unvermined.
The planks with props more false than slim, The tempting heaps of poisoned meal,
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