"Thus I, an easy philosopher,
Among the birds and trees confer,
And little now to make me wants,
Or of the fowl or of the plants.
Give me but wings, as they, and I
Straight floating on the air shall fly;
Or turn me but, and you shall see
I am but an inverted tree.
Already I begin to call
In their most learned original;
And, where I language want, my signs
The bird upon the bough divines.
No leaf does tremble in the wind,
Which I returning cannot find.
Out of these scattered Sibyl's leaves,
Strange prophecies my fancy weaves:
What Rome, Greece, Palestine, e'er said,
I in this light Mosaic read.
Under this antic cope I move,
Like some great prelate of the grove;
Then, languishing at ease, I toss
On pallets thick with velvet moss;
While the wind, cooling through the boughs,
Flatters with air my panting brows.
Thanks for my rest, ye mossy banks!
And unto you, cool zephyrs, thanks!
Who, as my hair, my thoughts too shed,
And winnow from the chaff my head.
How safe, methinks, and strong behind
These trees have I encamped my mind!"
Here is a picture of a piscatorial idler and his trout stream, worthy of the pencil of Izaak Walton:—
"See in what wanton harmless folds
It everywhere the meadow holds:
Where all things gaze themselves, and doubt
If they be in it or without;
And for this shade, which therein shines
Narcissus-like, the sun too pines.
Oh! what a pleasure 't is to hedge
My temples here in heavy sedge;
Abandoning my lazy side,
Stretched as a bank unto the tide;
Or, to suspend my sliding foot
On the osier's undermining root,
And in its branches tough to hang,
While at my lines the fishes twang."
A little poem of Marvell's, which he calls Eyes and Tears, has the following passages:—
"How wisely Nature did agree
With the same eyes to weep and see!
That having viewed the object vain,
They might be ready to complain.
And, since the self-deluding sight
In a false angle takes each height,
These tears, which better measure all,
Like watery lines and plummets fall."
"Happy are they whom grief doth bless,
That weep the more, and see the less;
And, to preserve their sight more true,
Bathe still their eyes in their own dew;
So Magdalen, in tears more wise,
Dissolved those captivating eyes,
Whose liquid chains could, flowing, meet
To fetter her Redeemer's feet.
The sparkling glance, that shoots desire,
Drenched in those tears, does lose its fire;
Yea, oft the Thunderer pity takes,
And there his hissing lightning slakes.
The incense is to Heaven dear,
Not as a perfume, but a tear;
And stars shine lovely in the night,
But as they seem the tears of light.
Ope, then, mine eyes, your double sluice,
And practise so your noblest use;
For others, too, can see or sleep,
But only human eyes can weep."
The Bermuda Emigrants has some happy lines, as the following:—
"He hangs in shade the orange bright,
Like golden lamps in a green night."
Or this, which doubtless suggested a couplet in Moore's Canadian Boat Song:—
"And all the way, to guide the chime,
With falling oars they kept the time."
His facetious and burlesque poetry was much admired in his day; but a great portion of it referred to persons and events no longer of general interest. The satire on Holland is an exception. There is nothing in its way superior to it in our language. Many of his best pieces were originally written in Latin, and afterwards translated by himself. There is a splendid Ode to Cromwell—a worthy companion of Milton's glorious sonnet—which is not generally known, and which we transfer entire to our pages. Its simple dignity and the melodious flow of its versification commend themselves more to our feelings than its eulogy of war. It is energetic and impassioned, and probably affords a better idea of the author, as an actor in the stirring drama of his time, than the "soft Lydian airs" of the poems that we have quoted.