'Tis sung, there is a valiant Mamaluke
In foreign land, yelep'd ———[1]
To whom we have been oft compared
For person, parts, address, and beard;
Both equally reputed stout, 905
And in the same Cause both have fought.
He oft, in such attempts as these,
Came off with glory and success:
Nor will we fail in th' execution,
For want of equal resolution. 910
Honour is, like a widow, won
With brisk attempt, and putting on;
With ent'ring manfully and urging;
Not slow approaches, like a virgin.[2]
This said, as erst the Phrygian knight,[3] 915
So ours, with rusty steel did smite
His Trojan horse, and just as much
He mended pace upon the touch;
But from his empty stomach groan'd,
Just as that hollow beast did sound, 920
And, angry, answer'd from behind,
With brandish'd tail and blast of wind.
So have I seen, with armed heel,
A wight bestride a Common-weal,[4]
- ↑ Sir Samuel Luke. See the note at line 14. The Marmalukes were persons carried off, in their childhood, from various provinces of the Ottoman empire, and sold in Constantinople and Grand Cairo. They often rose first to be cachet's or lieutenants; and then to be beys or petty tyrants. In like manner in the English civil wars, many rose from the lowest rank in life to considerable power.
- ↑ These four lines are no doubt in allusion to a celebrated but somewhat indecent proverb, first quoted in Nath. Smith's Quakers' Spiritual Court, 1669, and adopted by Ray, with an amusing apology. See Bohn's Handbook of Proverbs, page 43.
- ↑ Laocoon; who, at the siege of Troy, suspecting treachery, struck the wooden horse with his spear.
- ↑ Our poet might possibly have in mind a print engraved in Holland. It represented a cow, the emblem of the Common-wealth, with the King of Spain on her back kicking and spurring her; the Queen of England before, stopping and feeding her; the Prince of Orange milking her; and the Duke of Anjou behind pulling her back by the tail. After the Spaniards, in a war of forty years, had spent an hundred millions of crowns, and had lost four hundred thousand men, they were forced to acknowledge the independence of the Dutch.
