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242 FRANCIS BACON'S CRYPTIC RHYMES
Who would be a mermaid fair, singing alone,
Combing her hair, under the sea,
In a golden curl with a comb of pearl, on a throne ?
The opening lines of the " Ode on the Death of the
Duke of Wellington " read :
Bury the Great Duke
With an empire's lamentation,
Let us bury the Great Duke
To the noise of the mourning of a mighty nation,
Mourning when their leaders fall,
Warriors carry the warrior's pall,
And sorrow darkens hamlet and hall.
The fourth stanza from the ballad " The Revenge," de
scribing Sir Richard Grenville defending his ship against
fifty-three Spanish ships, runs thus:
He had only a hundred seamen to work the ship and to fight,
And he sailed away from Flores till the Spaniard came in sight,
With his huge sea- castles heaving upon the weather bow.
" Shall we fight or shall we fly?
Good Sir Richard, tell us now,
For to fight is but to die !
There'll be little of us left
by the time this sun is set"
And Sir Richard said "
again We : be all
good English men.
Let us bang these dogs of Seville, the children of the devil,
For I never turn'd my back upon Don or devil yet"
We shall conclude with two short selections to instance
the delight in nursery rhymes. The first stanza from the
poem " Mother Hubbard " reads :
Old Mother Hubbard
Went to the cupboard
To get her poor Dog a bone ;
But when she came there
The cupboard was bare,
And so the poor Dog had none.
And the beginning of the poem " King Luckieboy's
Party " is :
King Luckieboy sat in his lofty state chair,
His Chancellor by him,
Attendants, too, nigh him,
For he was expecting some company there.