POEM original: "KLINCK-DICHT"

ON THE THIRD PART

OF THE

LIGHT OF NAVIGATION original: "LICHT DER ZEEVAERT"

The Strait is now swept of the overbearing rogues
Who harass the Archipelago the Aegean Sea early and late,
And draw their profit from the damage of honest people,
And taunt God, and the Law with theft and plunder:
The Cypriot merchant did not give two copper farthings
Out of fear of the danger: the insurance remained quickly behind:
The merchant slept peacefully, while by God's grace
He exchanges in cotton, and they their silver lumps:
For the fear of shipwreck is struck from everyone’s heart,
Now that the LIGHT OF NAVIGATION shines, and is brightly lit,
One fears neither Charybdis a whirlpool in the Strait of Messina nor Scylla a sea monster, often identified with a dangerous rock in the Strait of Messina, nor shoal, nor bank.
Nature, which jealously and anxiously bound us,
With cliffs under the sea, of Turkish and Greek shores
Must endure, that we land there free and unencumbered.

I.V. Vondelen.