From all these and this dull air
A fit object for despair,
She hath taught me by her might
To draw comfort and delight."

But these lines, however good, do not bear with them much of the general
character of the English antique. Something more of this will be found
in Corbet's "Farewell to the Fairies!" We copy a portion of Marvell's
"Maiden lamenting for her Fawn," which we prefer--not only as a specimen
of the elder poets, but in itself as a beautiful poem, abounding in
pathos, exquisitely delicate imagination and truthfulness--to anything
of its species:

"It is a wondrous thing how fleet
'Twas on those little silver feet,
With what a pretty skipping grace
It oft would challenge me the race,
And when't had left me far away
'Twould stay, and run again, and stay;
For it was nimbler much than hinds,
And trod as if on the four winds.
I have a garden of my own,
But so with roses overgrown,
And lilies, that you would it guess
To be a little wilderness;
And all the spring-time of the year
It only loved to be there.
Among the beds of lilies I
Have sought it oft where it should lie,
Yet could not, till itself would rise,
Find it, although before mine eyes.
For in the flaxen lilies shade
It like a bank of lilies laid;
Upon the roses it would feed
Until its lips even seemed to bleed,
And then to me 'twould boldly trip,
And print those roses on my lip,
But all its chief delight was still
With roses thus itself to fill,
And its pure virgin limbs to fold
In whitest sheets of lilies cold,
Had it lived long, it would have been
Lilies without, roses within."

How truthful an air of lamentations hangs here upon every syllable! It
pervades all. It comes over the sweet melody of the words--over the
gentleness and grace which we fancy in the little maiden herself--even
over the half-playful, half-petulant air with which she lingers on the
beauties and good qualities of her favorite--like the cool shadow of a
summer cloud over a bed of lilies and violets, "and all sweet flowers."
The whole is redolent with poetry of a very lofty order. Every line is
an idea conveying either the beauty and playfulness of the fawn, or the
artlessness of the maiden, or her love, or her admiration, or her grief,
or the fragrance and warmth and _appropriateness_ of the little
nest-like bed of lilies and roses which the fawn devoured as it lay upon
them, and could scarcely