you, a diamond sunk in mine,
Its worth unprized, to self alone must shine;
You without her, like hands bereft of head,
Like Ajax rage, by blindfold lust misled.
She light, you eyes; she head, and you the hands,
In fair proportion knit by heavenly hands;
Servants in queen, and queen in servants blest;
Your only glory, how to serve her best;
And hers how best the adventurous might to guide,
Which knows no check of foemen, wind, or tide,
So fair Eliza's spotless fame may fly
Triumphant round the globe, and shake th' astounded sky!"

With which sufficiently bad verses Loyalty passed on, while my Lady Bath
hinted to Sir Richard, not without reason, that the poet, in trying to
exalt both parties, had very sufficiently snubbed both, and intimated
that it was "hardly safe for country wits to attempt that euphuistic,
antithetical, and delicately conceited vein, whose proper fountain was
in Whitehall." However, on went Loyalty, very well pleased with himself,
and next, amid much cheering, two great tinsel fish, a salmon and a
trout, symbolical of the wealth of Torridge, waddled along, by means
of two human legs and a staff apiece, which protruded from the fishes'
stomachs. They drew (or seemed to draw, for half the 'prentices in the
town were shoving it behind, and cheering on the panting monarchs of
the flood) a car wherein sate, amid reeds and river-flags, three or
four pretty girls in robes of gray-blue spangled with gold, their heads
wreathed one with a crown of the sweet bog-myrtle, another with hops
and white convolvulus, the third with pale heather and golden fern. They
stopped opposite Amyas; and she of the myrtle wreath, rising and bowing
to him and the company, began with a pretty blush to say her say:--

"Hither from my moorland home,
Nymph of Torridge, proud I come;
Leaving fen and furzy brake,
Haunt of eft and spotted snake,
Where to fill mine urns I use,
Daily with Atlantic dews;
While beside the reedy flood
Wild duck leads her paddling brood.
For this morn, as Phoebus gay
Chased through heaven the night mist gray,
Close beside me, prankt in pride,
Sister Tamar rose, and cried,
'Sluggard, up! 'Tis holiday,
In the lowlands far away.
Hark! how jocund Plymouth bells,
Wandering up through mazy dells,
Call me down, with smiles to hail,
My daring Drake's returning sail