No More Learning

In a manly stubbomess,
Than be fatted up express,
For the Cannibal to dine.

XIX.

** While this grief does thee disarm.
All the enjoyment of our love
But the ravishment would prove
Of a body dead while warm ;



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OF MARVELL. 69



XX.

^ And I parting should appear
Like the gourmand Hebrew dead
While, with quails and manna fed^
He does through the desert err,

XXI.

" Or tlie witch that midnight wakes
For the fern, whose magic weed
In one minute casts the seed
And invisible him makes.

xxn.
** Grentler times for love are meant. :
Who for parting pleasure strain,
Grather roses in the rain,
Wet themselves and spoil their scent

XXIII.

** Farewell, therefore, all the fruit
Which I could from love receive :
Joy will not with sorrow weave,
Nor will I this grief pollute.

xxrv.
^ Fate, I come, as dark, as sad.
As thy malice could desire ;
Yet bring with me all the fire,
That love in his torches had. "



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70 THE POEMS



XXV.
At these words away he broke,
As who long has praying lien,
To his head's-man makes the sign
And receives the parting stroke.

XXVI.

But hence virgins all beware ;
Last night he with Phlogis slept,
This night for Dorinda kept,
And but rid to take the air.

xxvn.
Yet he does himself excuse;
Nor indeed without a cause :
For, according to the laws,
Why did Chloe once refuse ?



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OF MARVELL. 71



THE DEFINITION OF LOVE.

I.
My Love is of a birth as rare
As *iisy for object, strange and high ;
It was begotten by despair,
Upon impossibility.

n.
Magnanimous despair alone
Could show me so divine a thing.
Where feeble hope could ne'er have flown,
But vainly flapped its tinsel wing.

III.
And yet I quickly might arrive
Where my extended soul is fixed ;
But fate does iron wedges drive,
And always crowds itself betwixt

IV.

For fate with jealous eye does see
Two perfect loves, nor lets them close ;
Their union would her ruin be.
And her tyrannic jwwer depose.