Their chief blown up, in air, not waves, expired, To which his pride presumed to give the law;[112] The Dutch confessed heaven present, and retired, And all was Britain the wide ocean saw. 23. To nearest ports their shattered ships repair, Where by our dreadful cannon they lay awed; So reverently men quit the open air, Where thunder speaks the angry gods abroad. 24. And now approached their fleet from India, fraught With all the riches of the rising sun; And precious sand from southern climates brought, The fatal regions where the war begun.[113] 25. Like hunted castors, conscious of their store,[114] Their way-laid wealth to Norway's coast they bring; There first the North's cold bosom spices bore, And winter brooded on the eastern spring. 26. By the rich scent we found our perfumed prey, Which, flanked with rocks, did close in covert lie; And round about their murdering cannon lay, At once to threaten and invite the eye. 27. Fiercer than cannon, and than rocks more hard, The English undertake the unequal war; Seven ships alone, by which the port is barred, Besiege the Indies, and all Denmark dare. 28. These fight like husbands, but like lovers those; These fain would keep, and those more fain enjoy; And to such height their frantic passion grows, That what both love, both hazard to destroy. 29. Amidst whole heaps of spices lights a ball, And now their odours armed against them fly; Some preciously by shattered porcelain fall, And some by aromatic splinters die. 30. And though by tempests of the prize bereft, In heaven's inclemency some ease we find; Our foes we vanquished by our valour left, And only yielded to the seas and wind. 31. Nor wholly lost we so deserved a prey; For storms, repenting, part of it restored; Which as a tribute from the Baltic sea, The British ocean sent her mighty lord.[115] 32. Go, mortals, now, and vex yourselves in vain For wealth, which so uncertainly must come; When what was brought so far, and with such pain, Was only kept to lose it nearer home. 33. The son, who twice three months on th' ocean tost, Prepared to tell what he had passed before, Now sees in English ships the Holland coast, And parents' arms, in vain, stretched from the shore. 34. This careful husband had been long away, Whom his chaste wife and little children mourn; Who on their fingers learned to tell the day, On which their father promised to return. 35. Such are the proud designs of human-kind, And so we suffer shipwreck every where![116] Alas, what port can such a pilot find, Who in the night of fate must blindly steer! 36.