And in your kind
yourselves
prefer.
Marvell - Poems
that couldst so soon prevent
Those trains by youth against thee meant ;
Tears (wateiy shot that pierce the mind,) ^w
And sighs (love's cannon chai'ged with wind ;)
True praise (that breaks through all defence,)
And feigned complying innocence ;
But knowing where this ambush lay,
She 'scaped the safe, but roughest way. f^
This 'tis to have been from the first
In a domestic heaven nursed.
Under the discipline severe
Of Fairfax, and the starry Verb,
Where not one object can come nigh tsb
But pure, and spotless as the eye.
And goodness doth itself entail
On females, if there want a male.
Digitized by VjOOQIC
32 THE POEMS
Go now, fond sex, that on your face
Do all your useless study place.
Nor once at vice your brows dare knit.
Lest the smooth forehead wrinkled sit :
Yet your own face shall at you grin.
Thorough the black bag of your skin.
When knowledge only could have filled,
And virtue all those furrows tilled.
Hence she with graces more divine
Supplies beyond her sex the line,
And, like a sprig of misletoe.
On the Fairfacian oak does grow.
Whence, for some universal good,
The priest shall cut the sacred bud.
While her glad parents most rejoice
And make their destiny their choice.
Meantime, ye fields, springs, bushes, flowers.
Where yet she leads her studious houi-s,
(Till Fate her worthily translates
And find a Fairfax for our Thwates,)
Employ the means you have by her.
And in your kind yourselves prefer.
That, as all virgins she precedes,
So you all woods, streams, gardens, meads.
For you, Thessalian Tempe's seat
Shall now be scorned as obsolete ;
Aranjuez, as less, disdained ;
The Bel-Retiro, as constrained ;
But name not the Idalian grove.
For 'twas the seat of wanton love ;
Digitized by VjOOQIC
OF MARVELL. 33
Nor e'en the dead's Eljsian fields,
Yet not to them your beauty yields.
Tis not, as once appeared the world,
A heap confused together hurled,
All negligently overgrown,
Gulfs, deserts, precipices, stone ;
Your lesser world contains the same.
But in more decent order tame.
You, Heaven's centre, Nature's lap ;
And Paradise's only map.
And now the salmon-fishers moist,
Their leathern boats begin to hoist ;
And, like Antipodes in shoes.
Have shod their heads in their canoes.
How tortoise-like, but not so slow.
These rational amphibii go !
Let's in ; for the dark hemisphere
Does now like one of them appear.
Digitized by
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34 THK POEMS
THE CORONET.
When with the thorns with which I long, too
long,
With many a piercing wound,
My Saviour's head have crowned,
I seek with garlands to redress that wrong, —
Through every garden, every mead,
I gather flowers (my fruits are only flowers)
Dismantling all the fragrant towers
That once adorned my shepherdess's head :
And now, when I have summed up all my store.
Thinking (so I myself deceive)
So rich a chaplet thence- to weave
As never yet the King of Glory wore,
Alas !
Those trains by youth against thee meant ;
Tears (wateiy shot that pierce the mind,) ^w
And sighs (love's cannon chai'ged with wind ;)
True praise (that breaks through all defence,)
And feigned complying innocence ;
But knowing where this ambush lay,
She 'scaped the safe, but roughest way. f^
This 'tis to have been from the first
In a domestic heaven nursed.
Under the discipline severe
Of Fairfax, and the starry Verb,
Where not one object can come nigh tsb
But pure, and spotless as the eye.
And goodness doth itself entail
On females, if there want a male.
Digitized by VjOOQIC
32 THE POEMS
Go now, fond sex, that on your face
Do all your useless study place.
Nor once at vice your brows dare knit.
Lest the smooth forehead wrinkled sit :
Yet your own face shall at you grin.
Thorough the black bag of your skin.
When knowledge only could have filled,
And virtue all those furrows tilled.
Hence she with graces more divine
Supplies beyond her sex the line,
And, like a sprig of misletoe.
On the Fairfacian oak does grow.
Whence, for some universal good,
The priest shall cut the sacred bud.
While her glad parents most rejoice
And make their destiny their choice.
Meantime, ye fields, springs, bushes, flowers.
Where yet she leads her studious houi-s,
(Till Fate her worthily translates
And find a Fairfax for our Thwates,)
Employ the means you have by her.
And in your kind yourselves prefer.
That, as all virgins she precedes,
So you all woods, streams, gardens, meads.
For you, Thessalian Tempe's seat
Shall now be scorned as obsolete ;
Aranjuez, as less, disdained ;
The Bel-Retiro, as constrained ;
But name not the Idalian grove.
For 'twas the seat of wanton love ;
Digitized by VjOOQIC
OF MARVELL. 33
Nor e'en the dead's Eljsian fields,
Yet not to them your beauty yields.
Tis not, as once appeared the world,
A heap confused together hurled,
All negligently overgrown,
Gulfs, deserts, precipices, stone ;
Your lesser world contains the same.
But in more decent order tame.
You, Heaven's centre, Nature's lap ;
And Paradise's only map.
And now the salmon-fishers moist,
Their leathern boats begin to hoist ;
And, like Antipodes in shoes.
Have shod their heads in their canoes.
How tortoise-like, but not so slow.
These rational amphibii go !
Let's in ; for the dark hemisphere
Does now like one of them appear.
Digitized by
34 THK POEMS
THE CORONET.
When with the thorns with which I long, too
long,
With many a piercing wound,
My Saviour's head have crowned,
I seek with garlands to redress that wrong, —
Through every garden, every mead,
I gather flowers (my fruits are only flowers)
Dismantling all the fragrant towers
That once adorned my shepherdess's head :
And now, when I have summed up all my store.
Thinking (so I myself deceive)
So rich a chaplet thence- to weave
As never yet the King of Glory wore,
Alas !
