No More Learning

And men the silent scene assist,

Charmed with the sapphire-winged mist;—

Maria, such, and so doth hush

The world, and through the evening rusk.

No new-born comet such a train

Draws through the sky, nor star new slain.

For straight those giddy rockets fail,

Which from the putrid earth exhale,

But by her flames, in heaven tried.

Nature is wholly vitrified.

'Tis she, that to these gardens gave

That wondrous beauty which they have ;

She straightness on the woods bestows ;

To her the meadow sweetness owes ;

Nothing could make the river be

So crystal pui*e, but only she.

She yet more pure, sweet, straight, and fair

Than gardens, woods, meads, rivers are.

Therefore what fii-st she on them spent.

They gratefully again present;

The meadow carpets where to tread,



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OP MARVELL. 31

The garden flowers to crown her head, "*>

And for a glass the limpid brook,

Where she may all her beauties look,

But, since she would not have them seen,

The wood about her draws a screen.

For she to higher beauties raised, 705

Disdains to be for lesser praised.

She counts her beauty to converse

In all the languages as hers ;

Nor yet in those herself employs,

But for the wisdom not the noise ; tio

Nor yet that wisdom would affect.

But as 'tis heaven's dialect.

Blest nymph ! 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.



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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.