And tear our
pleasures
with rough strife.
Marvell - Poems
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Should'st rubies find : I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the fiood.
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews ;
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow ;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze ;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest ;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state.
Nor would I love at lower rate.
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54 THE POEMS
But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near,
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found.
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song : then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity.
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust :
The grave's a fine and private place.
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youtliful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew.
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may.
And now, like amorous birds of prey
Rather at once our time devour.
Than languish in his slow-chaped power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball.
And tear our pleasures with rough strife.
Thorough the iron gates of life ;
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
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OF MARYZLL. 55
THE UNFORTUNATE LOVER.
Alas ! how pleasant are their days,
With whom the infant love yet plays 1
Sorted by pairs, they still are seen
By fountains cool and shadows green ;
But soon these flames do lose their light,
Like meteors of a summer's night ;
Nor can they to that region climb,
To make impression upon time.
'Twas in a shipwreck, when the seas
Ruled, and the winds did what they please,
That my poor lover floating lay.
And, ere brought forth, was cast away ;
Till at the last the master wave
Upon the rock his mother drave,
And there she split against the stone.
In a Csesarian section.
The sea him lent these bitter tears,
Which at his eyes he always beai*s,
And from the winds the sighs he bore.
Which through his surging breast do roar ;
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56 THE POEMS
No day he saw but that which breaks
Through frighted clouds in forked streaks,
While round the rattling thunder hurled,
As at the funeral of the world.
While nature to his birth presents
This masque of quarrelling elements,
A numerous fleet of cormorants black,
That sailed insulting o'er the wrack,
Received into their cruel care.
The unfortunate and abject heir ;
Guardians most fit to entertain
The orphan of the hurricane.
They fed him up with hopes and air,
Which soon digested to despair,
And as one cormorant fed him, still
Another on his heart did bill ;
Thus, while they famish him, and feast,
He both consumed, and increased.
And languished with doubtful breath,
The amphibium of life and death.
.
