Fair champaign with less rivers interveined, With herds the pastures throng'd, with flocks the hills; 'Well have we speeded, and o'er hill and dale, Turning with easy eye, thou may'st behold. That empire) under his dominion holds, He marches now in haste; see, though from far, They issue forth, steel bows and shafts their arms, Of equal dread in flight or in pursuit ; All horsemen, in which fight they most excel; See how in warlike muster they appear, In rhombs, and wedges, and half-moons, and wings.' In coats of mail and military pride; In mail their horses clad, yet fleet and strong, From Arachosia, from Candaor east, And Margiana, to the Hyrcanian cliffs Of Caucasus, and dark Iberian dales; From Atropatia, and the neighbouring plains Of Susiana, to Balsara's haven. He saw them in their forms of battle ranged, How quick they wheel'd, and flying behind them shot Mules after these, camels, and dromedaries, The city of Gallaphrone, from thence to win His daughter, sought by many prowest knights, SAMSON AGONISTES. [1667; æt. 59.] Many are the sayings of the wise, With studied argument, and much persuasion sought, But with the afflicted in his pangs their sound Little prevails, or rather seems a tune Harsh, and of dissonant mood from his complaint: Unless he feel within Some source of consolation from above, Secret refreshings, that repair his strength, And fainting spirits uphold. God of our fathers! what is man, That thou towards him with hand so various, Or might I say contrarious, Temper'st thy providence through his short course, Not evenly, as thou rulest The angelic orders, and inferior creatures mute, Nor do I name of men the common rout, That, wandering loose about, Grow up and perish, as the summer-fly, And people's safety, which in part they effect • Amidst their height of noon, Changest thy countenance, and thy hand, with no regard Of highest favours past From thee on them, or them to thee of service. Nor only dost degrade them, or remit To life obscured, which were a fair dismission, But throw'st them lower than thou didst exalt them high, Unseemly falls in human eye, Too grievous for the trespass or omission; Oft leavest them to the hostile sword Of heathen and profane, their carcasses To dogs and fowls a prey, or else captived; Or to the unjust tribunals, under change of times, And condemnation of the ungrateful multitude. If these they 'scape, perhaps in poverty With sickness and disease thou bow'st them down, In crude old age; Though not disordinate, yet causeless suffering The punishment of dissolute days: in fine, Just or unjust, alike seem miserable, For oft alike both come to evil end. ANDREW MARVELL. [BORN at Winestead near Hull, March 31, 1621; died in London, 1678. His poems were first collected by his widow, and published in a folio volume, 1681, but since that time about twenty-five new poems have been discovered. Mr. Grosart has published the complete works in the Fuller Worthies' Library.} Andrew Marvell was not only a public man of mark and the first pamphleteer of his day, but a lyric and satiric poet. As a lyric poet he still ranks high. His range of subjects and styles is wide. He touches at different points Herbert, Cowley, Waller, Dryden, and the group of Lovelace and Suckling. But his most interesting connection is with Milton. Of that intellectual lustre which was produced by the union of classical culture and ancient love of liberty with Puritan enthusiasm, Milton was the central orb, Marvell a satellite, paler yet bright. Like Milton, Marvell was at Cambridge, and there, after making himself an excellent Latinist, he graduated, as Milton had before him, in rebellious Liberalism by a quarrel with the authorities of his college. During his student days he was nearly drawn into the toils of the Jesuits; but he broke loose with an energy of reaction which has left its trace in Fleckno, his earliest satire. He afterwards spent four years on the Continent, living for some time at Rome, where, like Milton, he steeped his mind in Latin literature and inflamed his hatred of the Papacy. In 1650 Marvell became tutor to Mary the daughter of Fairfax, the general of the Parliament, who had laid down his command and was spending his quiet days in literature, gardening and collecting books and medals at his manor house of Nun Appleton in Yorkshire. Here Marvell was in a special home of the Protestant chivalry of which Spenser was the poet. Spenser accordingly |