William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

‘What should we do but sing his praise,
That led us through the watery maze,
Unto an isle so long unknown,
And yet far kinder than our own?
Where he the huge sea-monsters wracks,
That lift the deep upon their backs.
He lands us on a grassy stage,
Safe from the storms’ and prelates’ rage.
He gave us this eternal spring,
Which here enamels everything;
And sends the fowls to us in care,
On daily visits through the air;
He hangs in shades the orange bright,
Like golden lamps in a green night;
And doth in the pomegranates close
Jewels more rich than Ormus shows.

He makes the figs our mouths to meet,
And throws the melons at our feet;
But apples plants of such a price,
No tree could ever bear them twice.
With cedars, chosen by his hand,
From Lebanon, he stores the land;
And makes the hollow seas that roar,
Proclaim the ambergris on shore.
He cast (of which we rather boast)
The Gospel’s pearl upon our coast,
And in these rocks for us did frame
A temple, where to sound his Name.
Oh! let our voice his praise exalt,
Till it arrive at heaven’s vault,
Which then, perhaps, rebounding, may
Echo beyond the Mexique Bay.’

Thus sang they, in the English boat,
An holy and a cheerful note,
And all the way, to guide their chime
With falling oars they kept the time.

Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)

Most ugly shapes, and horrible aspects
Such as Dame Nature self might fear to see
Or shame, that ever should so foul defects
From her most cunning hand escaped be;
All dreadful portraits of deformity:
Spring-headed Hydras, and sea-should’ring whales,
Great whirlpools, which all fishes make to flee,
Bright Scolopendras, armed with silver scales,
Mighty Monoceroses, with immeasured tails.

The dreadful fish, that hath deserved the name
Of death, and like him looks in dreadful hue,
The grisly wasserman, that makes his game
The flying ships with swiftness to pursue,
The horrible sea-satyr, that doth show
His fearful face in times of greatest storm,
Huge Ziffius whom mariners eschew,
No less than rocks (as travellers inform,)
And greedy rosmarines with visages deforme.

All these, and thousands thousands many more,
And more deformed monsters thousand fold,
With dreadful noise, and hollow rumbling roar,
Came rushing in the foamy waves enrold,
Which seemed to fly for fear, them to behold:
No wonder, if these did the knight appal,
For all that here on earth we dreadful hold,
Be but as bugs to fearen babes withal,
Compared to the creatures in the sea’s entrall.

Edmund Spenser (1552-1599)

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)