what docs it boot
To build below the grass's root ;
When lowness is unsafe as height^
And chance overtakes Avhat 'scapeth spite ?
To build below the grass's root ;
When lowness is unsafe as height^
And chance overtakes Avhat 'scapeth spite ?
Marvell - Poems
3»
The sight does from these bastions ply,
The invisible artillery.
And at proud Cawood Castle seems
To point the battery of its beams,
As if it quarrelled in the seat, xa
The ambition of his prelate great,
But o'er the meads below it plays,
Or innocently seems to gaze.
And now to the abyss I pass
Of that unfathomable grass, 370
Where men like grasshoppers appear,
But grasshoppers are giants there :
They, in their squeaking laugh, contemn
Us as we walk more low than them,
Digitized by VjOOQIC
20 THE POEMS
And from the precipices tall
Of the green spires to us do call.
To see men through this meadow dive,
We wonder how they rise alive ;
As under water, none does know
Whether he fall through it or go,
But, as the mariners who sound,
And show upon their lead the ground,
They bring up flowers so to be seen,
And prove they've at the bottom been.
No scene, that turns with engines strange,
Does oftener than these meadows change ;
For when the sun the gi-ass hath vexed.
The tawny mowers enter next.
Who seem like Israelites to be,
Walking on foot through a green sea.
To them the grassy deeps divide,
And crowd a lane to either side ;
With whistling scythe and elbow strong
These massacre the grass along,
While one, unknowing, carves the rail.
Whose yet unfeathered quills her fail ;
The edge all bloody from its breast
He draws, and does In's stroke detest.
Fearing the flesh, untimely mowed.
To him a fate as black forebode.
But bloody Thestylis, that waits
To bring the mowing camp their cates,
Greedy as kite, has trussed it up
And forthwith means on it to sup.
Digitized by VjOOQIC
OF MARVELL. 21
When on another quick she lights^ ^
And cries, " he calFd us Israelites ;
But now, to make his saying true^
Rails rain for quails, for manna dew. "
Unhappy biixls !
what docs it boot
To build below the grass's root ;
When lowness is unsafe as height^
And chance overtakes Avhat 'scapeth spite ?
And now your orphan parent's call
Sounds your untimely funeral ;
Death-trumpets creak in such a note, 415
And 'tis the sourdine in their throat.
Or sooner hatch, or higher build ;
The mower now commands the field ;
In whose new traverse seemeth wrought
A camp of battle newly fought, <»
Where, as the meads with hay, the plain
Lies quilted o'er with bodies slain :
The women that with forks it fling.
Do represent the pillaging.
And now the careless victors play, *»
Dancing the triumphs of the hay,
Where every mower's wholesome heat
Smells like an Alexander's sweat,
Their females fragrant as the mead
Which they in fairy ciixiles tread : *»
When at their dance's end they kiss,
Their new-made hay not sweeter is ;
When, after this, 'tis piled in cocks.
Like a calm sea it shews the rocks ;
Digitized by VjOOQIC
22 THE POEMS.
We wondering in the river near «»
How l>oat8 among them safely steer ;
Or, like the desert Memphis' sand,
Short pyramids of hay do stand ;
And such the Roman camps do rise
In hills for soldiers' obsequies. *^
This scene, again withdrawing, brings
A new and empty face of things ;
A levelled space, as smooth and plain,
As cloths for Lilly * stretched to stain.
The world when first created sure «»
Was such a table rase and pure ;
Or rather such is the Toril,
Ere the bulls enter at Madril ;
For to this naked equal flat,
Which levellers take pattern at, 46o
The villagers in common chase
Their cattle, which it closer rase ;
And what below the scythe increased
Is pinched yet nearer by the beast.
Such, in the painted world, appeared 455
Davenant, with the universal herd.
They seem within the polished grass
A landscape drawn in looking-glass ;
And shrunk in the huge pasture, show
As spots, so shaped, on faces do ; 4(. o
Such fleas, ere they approach the eye,
In multiplying glasses lie.
• An eminent cloth dyer.
Digitized by VjOOQIC
OP MARVELL. 23
They feed so wide, so slowly move,
As constellations do above.
Then, to conclude these pleasant acts, *S6
Denton sets ope its cataracts ;
And makes the meadow truly be
(What it but seemed before) a sea ;
For, jealous of its Lord's long stay,
It tries to invite him thus away.
The sight does from these bastions ply,
The invisible artillery.
And at proud Cawood Castle seems
To point the battery of its beams,
As if it quarrelled in the seat, xa
The ambition of his prelate great,
But o'er the meads below it plays,
Or innocently seems to gaze.
And now to the abyss I pass
Of that unfathomable grass, 370
Where men like grasshoppers appear,
But grasshoppers are giants there :
They, in their squeaking laugh, contemn
Us as we walk more low than them,
Digitized by VjOOQIC
20 THE POEMS
And from the precipices tall
Of the green spires to us do call.
To see men through this meadow dive,
We wonder how they rise alive ;
As under water, none does know
Whether he fall through it or go,
But, as the mariners who sound,
And show upon their lead the ground,
They bring up flowers so to be seen,
And prove they've at the bottom been.
No scene, that turns with engines strange,
Does oftener than these meadows change ;
For when the sun the gi-ass hath vexed.
The tawny mowers enter next.
Who seem like Israelites to be,
Walking on foot through a green sea.
To them the grassy deeps divide,
And crowd a lane to either side ;
With whistling scythe and elbow strong
These massacre the grass along,
While one, unknowing, carves the rail.
Whose yet unfeathered quills her fail ;
The edge all bloody from its breast
He draws, and does In's stroke detest.
Fearing the flesh, untimely mowed.
To him a fate as black forebode.
But bloody Thestylis, that waits
To bring the mowing camp their cates,
Greedy as kite, has trussed it up
And forthwith means on it to sup.
Digitized by VjOOQIC
OF MARVELL. 21
When on another quick she lights^ ^
And cries, " he calFd us Israelites ;
But now, to make his saying true^
Rails rain for quails, for manna dew. "
Unhappy biixls !
what docs it boot
To build below the grass's root ;
When lowness is unsafe as height^
And chance overtakes Avhat 'scapeth spite ?
And now your orphan parent's call
Sounds your untimely funeral ;
Death-trumpets creak in such a note, 415
And 'tis the sourdine in their throat.
Or sooner hatch, or higher build ;
The mower now commands the field ;
In whose new traverse seemeth wrought
A camp of battle newly fought, <»
Where, as the meads with hay, the plain
Lies quilted o'er with bodies slain :
The women that with forks it fling.
Do represent the pillaging.
And now the careless victors play, *»
Dancing the triumphs of the hay,
Where every mower's wholesome heat
Smells like an Alexander's sweat,
Their females fragrant as the mead
Which they in fairy ciixiles tread : *»
When at their dance's end they kiss,
Their new-made hay not sweeter is ;
When, after this, 'tis piled in cocks.
Like a calm sea it shews the rocks ;
Digitized by VjOOQIC
22 THE POEMS.
We wondering in the river near «»
How l>oat8 among them safely steer ;
Or, like the desert Memphis' sand,
Short pyramids of hay do stand ;
And such the Roman camps do rise
In hills for soldiers' obsequies. *^
This scene, again withdrawing, brings
A new and empty face of things ;
A levelled space, as smooth and plain,
As cloths for Lilly * stretched to stain.
The world when first created sure «»
Was such a table rase and pure ;
Or rather such is the Toril,
Ere the bulls enter at Madril ;
For to this naked equal flat,
Which levellers take pattern at, 46o
The villagers in common chase
Their cattle, which it closer rase ;
And what below the scythe increased
Is pinched yet nearer by the beast.
Such, in the painted world, appeared 455
Davenant, with the universal herd.
They seem within the polished grass
A landscape drawn in looking-glass ;
And shrunk in the huge pasture, show
As spots, so shaped, on faces do ; 4(. o
Such fleas, ere they approach the eye,
In multiplying glasses lie.
• An eminent cloth dyer.
Digitized by VjOOQIC
OP MARVELL. 23
They feed so wide, so slowly move,
As constellations do above.
Then, to conclude these pleasant acts, *S6
Denton sets ope its cataracts ;
And makes the meadow truly be
(What it but seemed before) a sea ;
For, jealous of its Lord's long stay,
It tries to invite him thus away.
