As some brave admiral, in former war, Deprived of force, but pressed with courage still, Two rival fleets appearing from afar, Crawls to the top of an adjacent hill; From whence (with thoughts full of concern) he views [5] The wise and daring conduct of the fight, And each bold action to his mind renews His present glory, and his past delight; From his fierce eyes, flashes of rage he throws, As from black clouds when lightning breaks away, [10] Transported, thinks himself amidst his foes, And absent yet enjoys the bloody day;
I chose these twelve lines as my reading for the Flipgrid assignment. They are dramatic, pulling you in as John Wilmot describes this battle. At first glance it seems like he is talking about a real battle. The way he describes it makes it seem like he is actually there, like this is some great battle in history that he is describing as his forces win the day. However, upon continuing the reading of this poem, it seems more like he is talking about his life and its troubles than an actual battle. Maybe, as an Earl, he was a part of a real battle, but I believe it is a metaphor for the troubles of his life like Pox. What I really like about these first twelve lines, though, is that towards the end we start to see that maybe it's not just as an actual battle. "Absent yet enjoys the bloody day" makes it appear like he's not actually there, that he is retelling it maybe from someone else's point of view, but if this battle is just a metaphor, I think that it is him trying to look at his life from an outside perspective, to distance himself from it and enjoy the bloodiness of it all instead of having to feel and experience how overwhelming it is.