A web-based edition of early seventeenth-century political poetry from manuscript sources. It brings into the public domain over 350 poems, many of which have never before been published.
Nii4 The Belgick Frogge, out of the bogge, with Brittish mouse doth strive
Notes. This poem—dated 1622 in one source (BL Add. MS 28640)—laments that economic competition (over trade in the East Indies) has divided the Protestant English from their natural confessional allies, the Dutch United Provinces, ceding the advantage to their common enemy, the Spanish.
“Quarrell betweene the Dutch & English”
The Belgick Frogge, out of the bogge,1 with Brittish mouse doth strive:
The Iberian Kite2 meane while by slight, surprizeth both alive.
While for their shares, of Indian wares, English & Dutch doe brawle;
The Spanyards watch, advantage catch, to seize on them & all.
Then bee agreed, and take good heed,
5Make not a needles fray:
Lest to a third (that ravenous Bird)
You both bee made a pray.
Source. Bodleian MS Rawl. Poet. 26, fol. 82v
Other known sources. Whiteway 40; BL Add. MS 23723, fol. 22r; BL Add. MS 28640, fol. 103v; BL MS Egerton 784, fol. 22v
Nii4
1 The Belgick Frogge, out of the bogge: i.e. the Dutch. Large areas of land in the United Provinces were reclaimed from the sea by a sophisticated system of walls and drainage—thus the dismissive “bogge”. <back>
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