No More Learning

And yet there walks one on the sod.



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OF MARVELL. 15

Who, had it pleased him and God,

Might once have made our gardens spring,

Fresh as his own, and flourishing.

But he preferred to the Cinque Ports,

These ^vq imaginary forts, sm

And, in those half-dry trenches, spanned

Power which the ocean might command.

For he did, with his utmost skill.

Ambition weed, but conscience till, —

Conscience, that heaven-nursed plant, 333

Which most our earthly gardens want.

A prickling leaf it bears, and such

As that which shrinks at every touch,

But flowers eternal, and divine,

Which in the crowns of Saints do shine. 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,



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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.



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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 ; <i»

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 ;



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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.