115 But he, unmoved, contemns their idle threat,
       Secure of fame whene’er he please to fight: 
     His cold experience tempers all his heat,
       And inbred worth doth boasting valour slight.

 116 Heroic virtue did his actions guide,
       And he the substance, not the appearance chose
     To rescue one such friend he took more pride,
       Than to destroy whole thousands of such foes.

 117 But when approach’d, in strict embraces bound,
       Rupert and Albemarle together grow;
     He joys to have his friend in safety found,
       Which he to none but to that friend would owe.

 118 The cheerful soldiers, with new stores supplied,
       Now long to execute their spleenful will;
     And, in revenge for those three days they tried,
       Wish one, like Joshua’s, when the sun stood still.

 119 Thus reinforced, against the adverse fleet,
       Still doubling ours, brave Rupert leads the way: 
     With the first blushes of the morn they meet,
       And bring night back upon the new-born day.

 120 His presence soon blows up the kindling fight,
       And his loud guns speak thick like angry men: 
     It seem’d as slaughter had been breathed all night,
       And Death new pointed his dull dart again.

 121 The Dutch too well his mighty conduct knew,
       And matchless courage since the former fight;
     Whose navy like a stiff-stretch’d cord did show,
       Till he bore in and bent them into flight.

 122 The wind he shares, while half their fleet offends
       His open side, and high above him shows: 
     Upon the rest at pleasure he descends,
       And doubly harm’d he double harms bestows.

 123 Behind the general mends his weary pace,
       And sullenly to his revenge he sails: 
     So glides some trodden serpent on the grass,
       And long behind his wounded volume trails.

 124 The increasing sound is borne to either shore,
       And for their stakes the throwing nations fear: 
     Their passions double with the cannons’ roar,
       And with warm wishes each man combats there.

 125 Plied thick and close as when the fight begun,
       Their huge unwieldy navy wastes away;
     So sicken waning moons too near the sun,
       And blunt their crescents on the edge of day.

 126 And now reduced on equal terms to fight,
       Their ships like wasted patrimonies show;
     Where the thin scattering trees admit the light,
       And shun each other’s shadows as they grow.

 127 The warlike prince had sever’d from the rest
       Two giant ships, the pride of all the main;
     Which with his one so vigorously he prest,
       And flew so home they could not rise again.

 128 Already batter’d, by his lee they lay,
       In rain upon the passing winds they call: 
     The passing winds through their torn canvas play,
       And flagging sails on heartless sailors fall.