No More Learning

The deathless fairies take me ofl
To lead them in their dances soft,
And when I tune myself to sing.
About me they contract their ring.

How happy might I still have mowed.
Had not Love here his thistle sowed I
But now I all the day complain.
Joining my labour to my pain,
And with my scythe cut down the grass.
Yet still my grief is where it was ;
But when the iron blunter grows,
Sighing I whet my scythe and woes.

While thus he drew his elbow round,
Depopulating all the ground,
And, with his whistling scythe, does cut
Each stroke between the earth and root,



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94 THE POEMS

The edged steel, by careless chance,
Did into his own ankle glance,
And there among the grass fell down.
By his own scythe the mower mown.

Alas ! said he, these hurts are slight
To those that die by love's despite.
With shepherd's-purse, and clown's all-heal,
The blood I stanch and wound I seal.
Only for him no cure is found,
Whom Juliana's eyes do wound ;
'Tis death alone that this must do ;
For, Death, thou art a Mower too.



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OF BIARVELL. 95



THE MOWER TO THE GLOW WORMS.



Ye living lamps, by whose dear light
The nightingale does sit so late.
And studying all the summer night,
Her matchless songs does meditate ;

ir.
Ye country comets, that portend
No war nor prince's funeral,
Shining unto no other end
Than to presage the grass's fall ;

III.
Ye Glow-worms, whose officious flame
To wandering mowers shows the way,
That in the night have lost their aim,
And afler foolish fires do stray ;

IV.

Your courteous lights in vain you waste,
Since Juliana here is come.
For she my mind hath so displaced.
That I shall never find my home.



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96 THE POEMS



THE MOWER'S SONG.



Mt mind was once the true survey
Of all these meadows fresh and gay,
And in the greenness of the grass
Did see its hopes as in a glass,
When Juliana came, and she,
What I do to the grass, does to my thoughts
and me.

II.

But these, while I with sorrow pine,
Gi-ew more luxuriant still and fine,
That not one blade of grass you spied,
But had a flower on either side, —
When Juliana came, and she,
What I do to the grass, does to my tlioughts
and me.

III.

Unthankful meadows, could you so
A fellowship so true forego,
And in your gaudy May-games meet.
While I lay trodden under feet,



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OF MARVELL. 97

When Juliana came, and she,
What I do to the grass, does to mj thoughts
and me ?

rv.

But what you in compassion ought.