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 h
|