glide;Pensive and sad I Melibaeus meet.
And thus the melancholy shepherd greet.
Kind swain, what cloud dares overcast your brow,
Bright as the skies o’re happy Nile till now!
Does Chloe prove unkind, or some new fair?
Melibaeus. No Damon, mine’s a public, nobler care;
Such in which you and all the world must share.
One friend may mollify another’s grief,
But public loss admits of no relief.
Dam. I guess your cause; O you that used to sing
Of Beauty’s charms and the delights of Spring;
Now change your note, and let your lute rehearse
The dismal tale in melancholy verse.
Mel. Prepare then, lovely swain: prepare to hear
The worst report that ever reached your ear.
My bower you know, hard by yon shady grove,
A fit recess for Damon’s pensive love:
As there dissolved I in sweet slumbers lay.
Tired with the toils of the precedent day,
The blustering winds disturb my kind repose,
Till frightened with the threatening blast, I rose.
But O, what havoc did the day disclose?
Those charming willows which on Cherwel’s banks
Flourished, and thrived, and grew in evener ranks
Than those which followed the divine command
Of Orpheus lyre, or sweet Amphion’s hand.
By hundreds fall, while hardly twenty stand.
The stately oaks which reached the azure sky,
And kissed the very clouds, now prostrate lie.
Long a huge pine did with the winds contend;
This way, and that, his reeling trunk they bend,
Till forced at last to yield, with hideous sound
He falls, and all the country feels the wound.
Nor was the God of winds content with these;
Such humble victims can’t his wrath appease:
The rivers swell, not like the happy Nile,
To fatten, dew, and fructify our Isle:
But like the deluge, by great Jove designed
To drown the universe, and scourge mankind.
In vain the frighted cattle climb so high,
In vain for refuge to the hills they fly;
The waters Know no limits but the sky.
So now the bleating flock exchange in vain,
For barren clifts, their dewy fertile plain:
In vain, their fatal destiny to shun,
From Severn’s banks to higher grounds they run.
Nor has the navy better quarter found;
There we’ ve received our worst, our deepest wound.
The billows swell, and haughty Neptune raves.
The winds insulting o’er the impetuous waves.
Thetis incensed, rises with angry frown,
And once more threatens all the world to drown.
And owns no Power, but England’s and her own.
Yet the AEolian God dares vent his rage;
And ev’n the Sovereign of the seas engage.
What tho’ the mighty Charles of Spain ‘s on board.
The winds obey none but their blustering Lord.
Some ships were stranded, some by surges rent,
Down with their cargo to the bottom went.
The absorbent ocean could desire no more;
So well regal’d he never was before.
The hungry fish could hardly wait the day,
When the sun’s beams should chase the storm away,
But quickly seize with greedy jaws their prey.
Dam. So the great Trojan, by the hand of fate,
And haughty power of angry Juno’s hate,
While with like aim he crossed the seas, was tost,
From shore to shore, from foreign coast to coast:
Yet safe at last his mighty point he gained;
In charming promised peace and splendour reigned.
Mel. So may great Charles, whom equal glories move.
Like the great Dardan prince successful prove:
Like him, with honour may he mount the throne.
And long enjoy a brighter destined crown.
Chapter IV.
Of the extent of this Storm, and from what parts it was supposed to come; with some circumstances as to the time of it.
As all our histories are full of the relations of tempests and storms which have happened in various parts of the world, I hope it may not be improper that some of them have been thus observed with their remarkable effects.
But as I have all along insisted, that no storm since the Universal Deluge was like this, either in its violence or its duration, so I must also confirm it as to the particular of its prodigious extent.
All the storms and tempests we have heard of in the world, have been gusts or squalls of wind that have been carried on in their proper channels, and have spent their force in a shorter space.
We feel nothing here of the hurricanes of Barbadoes, the north-west of New England and Virginia, the terrible gusts of
