Page:Grierson Herbert - First Half of the Seventeenth Century.djvu/50

30 But Vondel is more effective and felicitous in the shorter and intenser satires. These were not, like Huyghens', composed on the classical model, but are rather political squibs, popular songs and ballads, often in the nasal Amsterdam dialect, or short, pithy, epigrammatic copies of verses. Indignation has seldom inspired more burning lines than the short and famous Geuse Vesper of Sieckentroost on the execution of Oldenbarneveldt:—

"Did he bear the fate of Holland                On his heart,       To the latest breath he drew                 With bitter smart;       Thus to lave a perjured sword                 With stainless blood,       And to batten crow and raven                 On his good?

Was it well to carve that neck Within whose veins Age the loyal blood had withered? 'Mong his gains Were not found the Spanish pistoles Foul with treason, Strewn to whet the mob's wild hate, That knows no reason.

But the Cruelty and Greed Which plucked the sword Ruthless from the sheath, now mourns With bitter word; What avails for us, alas! that Blood and gain Now to dull Remorse's cruel Gnawing pain?