No More Learning

Thou in a pitch how far beyond the sphere
Of human glory tower'st, and reigning there
Despoiled of mortal robes, in seas of bliss
Plunging, dost bathe, and tread the bright abyss !
There tiiy great soul yet once a world doth see,
Spacious enough and pure enough for thee.
How soon thou Moses hast, and Joshua found.
And Daviti, for the sword and hai-p renowned ;
How straight canst to each happy mansion go,
(Far better known above than here below,)
And in those joys dost spend the endless day.
Which in expressing, we ourselves betray !

For we, since thou art gone, with heavy

doom,
Wander like ghosts about thy loved tomb,
And lost in tears, have neither sight nor mind
To guid»j us upward through this region blind ;
Since thou art gone, who best that way couldst

tracli,
Only our >ighs, perhaps, may thither reach.



Digitized by VjOOQIC



OP MARVELL. . 167

And Richard yet, where his great parent led,
Beats on the rugged track : he virtue d^ad
Revives, and by his milder beams assures ;
And yet how much of them his grief obscures I
He, as his father, long was kept from sight
In private, to be viewed by better light ;
But opened once, what splendour does he throw !
A Cromwell in an hour a prince will grow.
How he becomes that seat, how strongly strains,
How gently winds at once the ruling reins !
Heaven to this choice prepared'a diadem,
Richer than any Eastern silk, or gem,
A pearly rainbow, where the sun inchased,
His brows like an imperial jewel graced.

We find already what those omens mean,
EaHh ne'er more glad, nor Heaven more serene.
Cease now our griefs, calm peace succeeds a war.
Rainbows to storms, Richard to Oliver.
Tempt not his clemency to try his power,
He threats no deluge, yet foretells a shower.



Digitized by



Google



Digitized by



Google



SATIRES.



Digitized by VjOOQIC



Digitized by VjOOQIC



SATIRES



THE CHARACTER OF HOLLAND,

Holland, that scarce deserves the name of

land,
As but the oflf-scouring of the British sand,
And so much earth as was contributed'
By English pilots when they heaved the lead,
Or what by the ocean's slow alluvion fell
Of shipwrecked cockle and the muscle-shell, —
This indigested vomit of the sea
Fell to the Dutch by just propriety.

Glad then, as miners who have found the ore.
They, with mad labour, fished the land to shore,
And dived as desperately fpr each piece
Of earth, as if 't had been of ambergreese.
Collecting anxiously small loads of clay.
Less than what building swallows bear away.
Or than those pills which sordid beetles roll.
Transfusing into them their dunghill soul.



Digitized by VjOOQIC



172 THE POEMS

How did they rivet, with gigantic piles,
Thorough the centre their new-catched miles,
And to the stake a struggling country bound,
Where barking waves still bait the forced

ground.
Building their watery Babel far more high
To reach the sea, than those to scale the sky !

Yet still his claim the injured ocean laid,
And oft at leap-frog o*er their steeples played,
As if on purpose it on land had come
To show them what's their mare liberum.
A daily deluge over them does boil ;
The earth and water play at level coil.
The fish ofttimes the burgher dispossessed,
And sat, not as a meat, but as a guest,
And oft the Tritons and the sea-nymphs saw
Whole shoals of Dutch served up for Cabillau,
Or, as they over the new level ranged
For pickled herring, pickled heerin changed.
Nature, it seemed, ashamed of her mistake.
Would throw their laud away at duck and drake ;
Therefore necessity, that first made kings,
Something like government among them brings ;
For, as with pygmies, who best kills the crane,
Among the hungry he that treasures grain.