uote
words from one of the most impressive passages in English prose, the
opening sentences of Cowley's _Discourse by way of Vision concerning the
Government of Oliver Cromwell_. The representatives of kings,
potentates, and powers crowded the aisles, and all was done that pomp
and ceremony could do. Marvell, arrayed in the six yards of mourning the
Council had voted him on the 7th of September, was, we may be sure, in
the Abbey, and it may well be that his blind colleague, to whom the same
liberal allowance had been made, leant on his arm during the service.
Milton's muse remained silent. The vote of the House of Commons ordering
the undoing of this great ceremony was little more than two years ahead.
_O caeca mens hominum!_

Among the poems first printed by Captain Thompson from the old
manuscript book was one which was written therein in Marvell's own hand
entitled "A poem upon the Death of his late Highness the Protector." Its
composition was evidently not long delayed:--

"We find already what those omens mean,
Earth ne'er more glad nor Heaven more serene.
Cease now our griefs, calm peace succeeds a war,
Rainbows to storms, Richard to Oliver."

The lines best worth remembering in the poem are the following:--

"I saw him dead: a leaden slumber lies,
And mortal sleep over those wakeful eyes;
Those gentle rays under the lids were fled,
Which through his looks that piercing sweetness shed;
That port, which so majestic was and strong,
Loose, and deprived of vigour, stretched along;
All withered, all discoloured, pale and wan,
How much another thing, no more that man!
O, human glory vain! O, Death! O, wings!
O, worthless world! O, transitory things!
Yet dwelt that greatness in his shape decayed,
That still though dead, greater than Death he laid,
And in his altered face you something feign
That threatens Death, he yet will live again."

FOOTNOTES:

[49:1] In 1659 Clarendon, then Sir Edward Hyde, and in Brussels, writing
to Sir Richard Fanshaw, says, "You are the secretary of the Latin tongue
and I will mend the warrant you sent, and have it despatched as soon as
I hear again from you, but I must tell you the place in itself, if it be
not dignified by the person who hath some other qualification, is not to
be valued. There is no signet belongs to it, which can be only kept by a
Secretary of State, from whom the Latin Secretary always rec