1 Yet ere I go,
Disdainful Beauty, thou shalt be
So wretched as to know
What joys thou fling'st away with me.
2 A faith so bright,
As Time or Fortune could not rust;
So firm, that lovers might
Have read thy story in my dust,
3 And crowned thy name
With laurel verdant as thy youth,
Whilst the shrill voice of Fame
Spread wide thy beauty and my truth.
4 This thou hast lost,
For all true lovers, when they find
That my just aims were crossed,
Will speak thee lighter than the wind.
5 And none will lay
Any oblation on thy shrine,
But such as would betray
Thy faith to faiths as false as thine.
6 Yet, if thou choose
On such thy freedom to bestow,
Affection may excuse,
For love from sympathy doth flow.
NOTE ON ANACREON.
Let's not rhyme the hours away;
Friends! we must no longer play:
Brisk Lyaeus—see!—invites
To more ravishing delights.
Let's give o'er this fool Apollo,
Nor his fiddle longer follow:
Fie upon his forked hill,
With his fiddlestick and quill;
And the Muses, though they're gamesome,
They are neither young nor handsome;
And their freaks in sober sadness
Are a mere poetic madness:
Pegasus is but a horse;
He that follows him is worse.
See, the rain soaks to the skin,
Make it rain as well within.
Wine, my boy; we'll sing and laugh,
All night revel, rant, and quaff;
Till the morn, stealing behind us,
At the table sleepless find us.
When our bones, alas! shall have
A cold lodging in the grave;
When swift Death shall overtake us,
We shall sleep and none can wake us.
Drink we then the juice o' the vine
Make our breasts Lyaeus' shrine;
Bacchus, our debauch beholding,
By thy image I am moulding,
Whilst my brains I do replenish
With this draught of unmixed Rhenish;
By thy full-branched ivy twine;
By this sparkling glass of wine;
By thy Thyrsus so renowned:
By the healths with which th' art crowned;
By the feasts which thou dost prize;
By thy numerous victories;
By the howls by Moenads made;
By this haut-gout carbonade;
By thy colours red and white;
By the tavern, thy delight;
By the sound thy orgies spread;
By the shine of noses red;
By thy table free for all;
By the jovial carnival;
By thy language cabalistic;
By thy cymbal, drum, and his stick;
By the tunes thy quart-pots strike up;
By thy sighs, the broken hiccup;
By thy mystic set of ranters;
By thy never-tamed panthers;
By this sweet, this fresh and free air;
By thy goat, as chaste as we are;
By thy fulsome Cretan lass;
By the old man on the ass;
By thy cousins in mixed shapes;
By the flower of fairest grapes;
By thy bisks famed far and wide;
By thy store of neats'-tongues dried;
By thy incense, Indian smoke;
By the joys thou dost provoke;
By this salt Westphalia gammon;
By these sausages that inflame one;
By thy tall majestic flagons;
By mass, tope, and thy flapdragons;
By this olive's unctuous savour;
By this orange, the wine's flavour;
By this cheese o'errun with mites;
By thy dearest favourites;
To thy frolic order call us,
Knights of the deep bowl install us;
And to show thyself divine,
Never let it want for wine.
ANDREW MARVELL.
This noble-minded patriot and poet, the friend of Milton, the Abdiel of a dark and corrupt age,—'faithful found among the faithless, faithful only he,'—was born in Hull in 1620. He was sent to Cambridge, and is said there to have nearly fallen a victim to the proselytising Jesuits, who enticed him to London. His father, however, a clergyman in Hull, went in search of and brought him back to his university, where speedily, by extensive culture and the vigorous exercise of his powerful faculties, he emancipated himself for ever from the dominion, and the danger of the dominion, of superstition and bigotry. We know little more about the early days of our poet. When only twenty, he lost his father in remarkable circumstances. In 1640, he had embarked on the Humber in company with a youthful pair whom he was to marry at Barrow, in Lincolnshire. The weather was calm; but Marvell, seized with a sudden presentiment of danger, threw his staff ashore, and cried out, 'Ho for heaven!' A storm came on, and the whole company perished. In consequence of this sad event, the gentleman, whose daughter was to have been married, conceiving that the father had sacrificed his life while performing an act of friendship, adopted young Marvell as his son. Owing to this, he received a better education, and was sent abroad to travel. It is said that at Rome he met and formed a friendship with Milton, then engaged on his immortal continental tour. We find Marvell next at Constantinople, as Secretary to the English Embassy at that Court. We then lose sight of him till 1653, when he was engaged by the Protector to superintend the education of a Mr Dutton at Eton. For a year and a half after Cromwell's death, Marvell assisted Milton as Latin Secretary to the Protector. Our readers are all familiar with the print of Cromwell and Milton seated together at the council-table, —the one the express image of active power and rugged grandeur, the other of thoughtful majesty and ethereal grace. Marvell might have been added as a third, and become the emblem of strong English sense and incorruptible integrity. A letter of Milton's was, not long since, discovered, dated February 1652, in which he speaks of Marvell as fitted, by his knowledge of Latin and his experience of teaching, to be his assistant. He was not appointed, however, till 1657. In 1660, he became member for Hull, and was re-elected as long as he lived. He was absent, however, from England for two years, in the beginning of the reign, in Germany and Holland. After- wards he sought leave from his constituents to act as Ambassador's Secretary to Lord Carlisle at the Northern Courts; but from the year 1665 to his death, his attention to his parliamentary duties was unremitting. He constantly corresponded with his constituents; and after the longest sittings, he used to write out for their use a minute account of public proceedings ere he went to bed, or took any refreshment. He was one of the last members who received pay from the town he represented; (2s. a-day was probably the sum;) and his constituents were wont, besides, to send him barrels of ale as tokens of their regard. Marvell spoke little in the House; but his heart and vote were always in the right place. Even Prince Eupert continually consulted him, and was sometimes persuaded by him to support the popular side; and King Charles having met him once in private, was so delighted with his wit and agreeable manners, that he thought him worth trying to bribe. He sent Lord Danby to offer him a mark of his Majesty's consideration. Marvell, who was seated in a dingy room up several flights of stairs, declined the proffer, and, it is said, called his servant to witness that he had dined for three successive days on the same shoulder of mutton, and was not likely, therefore, to care for or need a bribe. When the Treasurer was gone, he had to send to a friend to borrow a guinea. Although, a silent senator, Marvell was a copious and popular writer. He attacked Bishop Parker for his slavish principles, in a piece entitled 'The Rehearsal Transposed,' in which he takes occasion to vindicate and panegyrise his old colleague Milton. His anonymous 'Account of the Growth of Arbitrary Power and Popery in England' excited a sensation, and a reward was offered for the apprehension of the author and printer. Marvell had many of the elements of a first-rate political pamphleteer. He had wit of a most pungent kind, great though coarse fertility of fancy, and a spirit of independence that nothing could subdue or damp. He was the undoubted ancestor of the Defoes, Swifts, Steeles, Juniuses, and Burkes, in whom this kind of authorship reached its perfection, ceased to be fugitive, and assumed classical rank.