Or by the girdles graspt, they practise with the hip, The[66] forward, backward, falx, the mar, the turn, the trip, When stript into their shirts, each other they invade Within a spacious ring, by the beholders made, According to the law. Or when the ball to throw, And drive it to the goal, in squadrons forth they go; And to avoid the troops their forces that fore-lay, Through dikes and rivers make, in this robustious play; By which the toils of war most lively are exprest. But, Muse, may I demand, Why these of all the rest, (As mighty Albion’s eld’st) most active are and strong? From[67] Corin came it first, or from the use so long? Or that this fore-land lies farth’st out into his sight, Which spreads his vigorous flames on every lesser light? With th’ virtue of his beams, this place that doth inspire, Whose pregnant womb prepar’d by his all-powerful fire, Being purely hot and moist, projects that fruitful seed, Which strongly doth beget, and doth as strongly breed: The well-disposed heaven here proving to the earth A husband furthering fruit, a midwife helping birth. But whilst th’ industrious Muse thus labours to relate Those rillets that attend proud Tamer and her state, A neighbourer of this nymph’s, as high in fortune’s grace, And whence calm Tamer trips, clear Towridge in that place Is poured from the spring, and seems at first to flow That way which Tamer strains; but as she great doth grow, Rememb’reth to foresee what rivals she should find To interrupt her course; whose so unsettled mind Ock coming in perceives, and thus doth her perswade: ‘Now Neptune shield, bright nymph, thy beauty should be made ‘The object of her scorn, which (for thou can’st not be ‘Upon the southern side so absolute as she) ‘Will awe thee in thy course. Wherefore, fair flood, recoil, ‘And where thou may’st alone be sov’reign of the soil, ‘There exercise thy pow’r, thy braveries and display: ‘Turn, Towridge, let us back to the Sabrinian sea, ‘Where Thetis’ handmaids still, in that recourseful deep, ‘With those rough Gods of sea continual revels keep; ‘There may’st thou live admir’d, the mistress of the lake.’ Wise Ock she doth obey, returning, and doth take The Taw; which from her fount forc’d on with amorous gales, And eas’ly ambling down through the Devonian dales, Brings with her Moul and Bray, her banks that gently bathe; Which on her dainty breast, in many a silver swathe, She bears unto that bay where Barstaple beholds How her beloved Taw clear Towridge there enfolds. The confluence of these brooks divulg’d in Dertmoor, bred Distrust in her sad breast, that she so largely spread, And in this spacious shire the near’st the center set Of any place of note, that these should bravely get The praise from those that sprung out of her pearly lap: Which, nourish’d and bred up at her most plenteous pap,