But Vondel is more effective and felicitous in the shorter and intenser satires. These were not, like Justice. Huyghens', composed on the classical model, but are rather political squibs, popular songs and ballads, often in the nasal Amsterdam dialect, or short, pithy, epigrammatic copies of verses. Indignation has seldom inspired more burning lines than the short and famous Geuse Vesper of Sieckentroost on the execution of Oldenbarneveldt:—
"Did he bear the fate of Holland
On his heart,
To the latest breath he drew
With bitter smart;
Thus to lave a perjured sword
With stainless blood,
And to batten crow and raven
On his good?
Was it well to carve that neck
Within whose veins
Age the loyal blood had withered?
'Mong his gains
Were not found the Spanish pistoles
Foul with treason,
Strewn to whet the mob's wild hate,
That knows no reason.
But the Cruelty and Greed
Which plucked the sword
Ruthless from the sheath, now mourns
With bitter word;
What avails for us, alas! that
Blood and gain
Now to dull Remorse's cruel
Gnawing pain?
