101 Yet like an English general will I die,
       And all the ocean make my spacious grave: 
     Women and cowards on the land may lie;
       The sea’s a tomb that’s proper for the brave.

 102 Restless he pass’d the remnant of the night,
       Till the fresh air proclaimed the morning nigh: 
     And burning ships, the martyrs of the fight,
       With paler fires beheld the eastern sky.

 103 But now, his stores of ammunition spent,
       His naked valour is his only guard;
     Rare thunders are from his dumb cannon sent,
       And solitary guns are scarcely heard.

 104 Thus far had fortune power, here forced to stay,
       Nor longer durst with virtue be at strife: 
     This as a ransom Albemarle did pay,
       For all the glories of so great a life.

 105 For now brave Rupert from afar appears,
       Whose waving streamers the glad general knows: 
     With full spread sails his eager navy steers,
       And every ship in swift proportion grows.

 106 The anxious prince had heard the cannon long,
       And from that length of time dire omens drew
     Of English overmatch’d, and Dutch too strong,
       Who never fought three days, but to pursue.

 107 Then, as an eagle, who, with pious care
       Was beating widely on the wing for prey,
     To her now silent eyrie does repair,
       And finds her callow infants forced away: 

 108 Stung with her love, she stoops upon the plain,
       The broken air loud whistling as she flies: 
     She stops and listens, and shoots forth again,
       And guides her pinions by her young ones’ cries.

 109 With such kind passion hastes the prince to fight,
       And spreads his flying canvas to the sound;
     Him, whom no danger, were he there, could fright,
       Now absent every little noise can wound.

 110 As in a drought the thirsty creatures cry,
       And gape upon the gather’d clouds for rain,
     And first the martlet meets it in the sky,
       And with wet wings joys all the feather’d train.

 111 With such glad hearts did our despairing men
       Salute the appearance of the prince’s fleet;
     And each ambitiously would claim the ken,
       That with first eyes did distant safety meet.

 112 The Dutch, who came like greedy hinds before,
       To reap the harvest their ripe ears did yield,
     Now look like those, when rolling thunders roar,
       And sheets of lightning blast the standing field.

 113 Full in the prince’s passage, hills of sand,
       And dangerous flats in secret ambush lay;
     Where the false tides skim o’er the cover’d land,
       And seamen with dissembled depths betray.

 114 The wily Dutch, who, like fallen angels, fear’d
       This new Messiah’s coming, there did wait,
     And round the verge their braving vessels steer’d,
       To tempt his courage with so fair a bait.