Page:The works of Anne Bradstreet in prose and verse.djvu/250

 164 Anne Bradjl reefs Works.

I've ieen unworthy men advanced high,

(And better ones fuffer extremity)

But neither favour, riches, title. State,

Could length their dayes or once reverfe their fate

I've feen one ftab'd,* and fome to loofe their heads f

And others fly, Itruck both w^ith gilt and dread.

I've feen and fo have you, for tis but late, [57]

The defolation of a goodly State,

Plotted and a6ted fo that none can tell.

Who gave the counfel, but the Prince of hell.

Three hundred thoufand flaughtered innocents,

By bloudy Popilh, hellilh mifcreants:

Oh may you live, and fo you w^ill I truft

To fee them fvvill in bloud untill they burft.J

I've feen a King § by force thruft from his throne.

And an Ufurper|| fubt'ly mount thereon.

front of La Rochelle, in 1627. Instead of '■'• Rochel" the first edition has " Cades " referring to the failure of a naval expedition under the command of Sir Edward Cecil, which sailed in October, 1625, to capture some Span- ish treasure ships in the bay of Cadiz.


 * Buckingham.

t The Earl of Strafford, Archbishop Laud, and Charles L

X Whoever has read of the massacre and inhuman atrocities connected with the Insurrection in Ireland in 1641 will not be surprised at the strong- language of the author. As to the number of those killed, Hume says, "By some computations, those who perished by all these cruelties are sup- posed to be a hundred and fifty or two hundred thousand : by the most moderate, and probably the most reasonable account, they are made to amount to forty thousand, — if this estimation itself be not, as is usual in such cases, somewhat exaggerated." — History of England, chap. Iv.

§ Charles I. ]| Cromwell.

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