Of halcyons kind, or
bleeding
pelicans ?
Marvell - Poems
Hanging about her neck, or at his knees :
Hold fast, dear infants, hold them both, or none ;
This will not stay, when once the other's gone.
A silent fire now wafts those limbs of wax,
And him within his tortured image racks.
So the flower withering, which the garden
crowned,
The sad root pines in secret under ground.
Each groan he doubled, and each sigh she sighed,
Repeated over to the restless night ;
No trembling string, composed to numbers new,
Answers the touch in notes more sad, more true.
She, lest he grieve, hides what she can, her pjiins,
And he, to lessen her*s, his sorrow feigns ;
Yet both perceived, yet both* concealed their
skills.
And so, diminishing, increased their ills.
That whether by each other's grief they fell.
Or on their own redoubled, none can tell.
Digitized by VjOOQIC
15S THE rOK. MS
And now Eliza's purple locks were shorn,
AVhere she so long h<;r fatlier's fate had worn ;
And frequent lightning to lier soul that flies,
Divides the air and opens all the skies.
And now his life, suspended by her breath,
Ran out impetuously to hastening Death.
Like polished mirroi*s, so his steely breast
Had every figure of her woes exprest,
And with the damp of her hist gasps obscured.
Had drawn such stains as were not to be cured.
Fate could not either reach with single stroke,
But, the dear image fled, the mirror broke.
"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.
Digitized by VjOOQIC
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 !
