You, who the
Scriptures
and the laws deface.
Marvell - Poems
And corposants* along the tacklings slide, —
The passengers all wearied out before,
Giddy, and wishing for the fatal shore, —
Some lusty mate, who with more careful eye,
Counted the hours, and every star did spy,
The helm does from the artless steersman strain.
And doubles back unto the safer main :
What though awhile they grumble, discontent ?
Saving himself, he does their loss prevent.
*Tis not a freedom that, where all command,
Nor tyranny, where one does them withstand ;
* Marine meteors, which Portuguese nuiriners call the
Bodies of the Saints; corpos santos.
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160 TOE POKMS
But who of both the bounders knows to lay,
Him, as their father, must the state obey.
Thou and thy house, like Noah's eight did rest,
Left by the war's flood, on the mountain's crest •,
And the large vale lay subject to thy will,
Which thou but as an husbandman, wouldst till ;
And only didst for others plant the vine
Of Liberty, not drunken with its wine.
That sober liberty which, men may have.
That they enjoy, but more they vainly crave ;
And such as to their parent's tents do press,
May show their own, not see his nakedness.
Yet such a clammish issue still doth rage,
The shame and plague both of the land and age,
Who watched thy halting, and thy fall divide,
Rejoicing when thy foot had slipped aside,
That their new king might the fifth sceptre
shake.
And make the world, by his example, quake ;
Whose frantic army, should they want for men,
Might muster heresies, so one were ten.
What thy misfortune, they the spirit call,
And their religion only is to fall.
Oh Mahomet ! now couldst thou rise again,
Thy Till )in«; -sickness should have made thee nign ;
While Fcak and Simpson would in many a toin**
Have Nvrit the comments of thy sacred foam :
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OF MAUVELL. 151
For soon thou might'st have passed among their
ranty
AVer't but for thine unmoved tulipant ;
As thou must needs have owned them of thy
band,
For prophecies fit to be alcoraned.
Accursed locusts, whom your king does spit
Out of the centre of the unbottomed pit ;
Wanderers, adulterers, liars, Muntzer*s rest,
Sorcerers, atheists, Jesuits, possest.
You, who the Scriptures and the laws deface.
With the same liberty as points and lace ;
O race ! most hypocritically strict,
Bent to reduce us to the ancient Pict,
Well may you act the Adam and the Eve,
Ay, and the serpent too, that did deceive.
But the great captain, now the danger's o*er,
Makes you, for his sake, tremble one fit more ;
And, to your spite, returning yet alive,
Does with himself, all that is good, revive.
So, when first man did through the morning dew.
See the bright sun his shining race pursue,
All day he followed, with unwearied sight.
Pleased with that other world of moving light ;
But thought him, M' hen he missed his setting
beams.
Sunk in the hills, or plunged below the strr. uiis,
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152 THE POEMS
While dismal blacks hung round the universe,
And stars, like tapers, burned upon his hearse ;
And owls and ravens with their screeching noise^
Did make their funerals sadder by their joys.
His weeping eyes the doleful vigils keep.
Not knowing yet the night was made for sleep.
Still to the west, where he him lost, he turned.
And with such accents, as despairing, mourned ;
*' Why did mine eyes once see so bright a ray ?
Or why day last no longer than a day ? '*
When straight the sun behind him he descried,
Smiling serenely from the further side.
So while our star that gives us light and heat.
