No More Learning

"Who now shall tell us more of mournful swans.
Of halcyons kind, or bleeding pelicans ?
No downy breast did e*er so gently beat.
Or fan with airy plumes so soft a heat ;
For he no duty by his height excused.
Nor, though a prince, to be a man refused ;
But rather than in his Eliza's pain
Not love, not grieve, would neither live nor

reign;
And in himself so ofl immortal tried.
Yet in compassion of another died.

So have I seen a vine, wiiose lasting age,
Of many a winter hath survived the rage.
Under whose shady tent, men every year,
At its rich blood's exp«ii>e their sorrows cheer;
If some dear branch where it extends its life,
Chance to be pruned by an untimely knife.



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OP MARVELL. 159

The parent tree unto the grief succeeds,
And through the wound its vital humour bleeds,
Trickling in watery drops, whose flowing shape
Weeps that it falls ere fixed into a grape ;
So the dry stock, no more that spreading vine.
Frustrates the autumn, and the hopes of wine.

A secret cause does sure those signs ordain.
Foreboding princes' falls, and seldom vain :
Whether some kinder powers, that wish us well,
What they above cannot prevent, foretell ;
Or the great world do by consent presage.
As hollow seas with future tempests rage ;
Or rather Heaven, which us so long foresees.
Their funerals celebrates, while it decrees.
But never yet was any human fate
By nature solemnized with so much state :
He unconcerned the dreadful passage crost.
But oh ! what pangs that death did Nature cost !

First the great thunder was shot off, and

sent
The signal from the starry battlement :
The winds receive it, and its force outdo.
As practising how they could thunder too ;
Out of the binder's hand the sheaves they tore.
And thrashed the harvest in the airy floor ;
Or of huge trees, whose growth with his did

rise,
The deep foundations opened to the skie? * ;



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160 THE POEMS

Tlien bear J Bhower>t the winged tempests lead,
And |KHir (he deluge o'er the chaon' bead.
Tlie race of warlike hor^H^ at hi« tomb,
Offer theiDiielvetf in many a hecatomb ;
With pensive head towards the ground they fall.
And helpless languii^h at the tainted stall.
Numbers of men decrease with pains unknown.
And hasten (not to see his deatli) their own.
Huch tortures all the elements unfixed,
Troubled to part where so exactly mixed ;
And as through air his wasting spirits flowed.
The world with throes laboured beneath their
load.

Nature, it seemed, with him would nature vie,
lie with Eliza, it with him would die.

He without noise still travelled to his end.
An silent suns to meet the night descend ;
Tiic Htars that for him fought, had only power
Left to determine now his fatal hour.