own Latin original of the Garden, a Buddha's paradise of endless contemplation :

What wondrous life is this I lead !
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine, and curious peach,
Into my hands themselves do reach ;
Stumbling on melons, as I pass,
Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass.
Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less,
Withdraws into its happiness;

The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas,
Annihilating all that's made

To a green thought in a green shade,
Here at the fountain's sliding foot,
Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root,
Casting the body's vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide;
There, like a bird, it sits and sings,
Then whets and combs its silver wings,
And, till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light,
Such was that happy garden-state,

While man there walked without a mate;
After a place so pure and sweet,
What other help could yet be meet!

But 'twas beyond a mortal's share

To wander solitary there :

Two paradises 'twere in one,

To live in paradise alone ! 12

Such ethereal melodies were his diversions, as I can scarcely believe the heavy flirtations of his Damon and Thyrsis with Dorinda and Clorinda ever to have been.

But he put his Muse to combative work also; and then he is a master. He ranks among the earliest of political poets; and Dryden does not surpass him at his best. Savage, often incredibly brutal, and even unjust, he could be, when his indignant broodings on the chances restored kingship had been given, and had squandered, exploded in the red-hot lava of Nostradamus's Prophecy, an Historical Poem, Clarendon's House-warming, Britannia and Ralegh, the Dialogue Between Two Horses, The Last Instructions to a Painter About the Dutch Wars! How exalted when, still a politician, he found it in his conscience to praise !

The welcome to Cromwell returning from Ireland is magnificent throughout; a loud song of exultation in the three-forked lightning of adventurous war, as well as in the victor's equal, and less lofty, capacity, alas, for the cunning of statesmanship :

When, twining subtle fears with hope,
He wove a net of such a scope,

That Charles himself might chase

To Caresbrooke's narrow case.

And then a hush !-We forget the Republican Conqueror and his craft. A greater for the instant mounts' the tragic scaffold; a prouder throne than its victim in his splendour had ever pressed! Every faithful Royalist, persecuted, down-trodden, must have felt his blood stir, and himself to be a glorified martyr, as he read the incomparable tribute from a Roundhead to the majesty of his King by right divine:

He nothing common did, or mean,
Upon that memorable scene,

But with his keener eye
The axe's edge did try ;

Nor called the gods with vulgar spite
To vindicate his helpless right;

But bowed his comely head
Down, as upon a bed.13

Poetry here beats history on its own ground.

The passage is the one sublime, by no means the only eminent, example of Marvell's faculty for realistic imagining. Frequently as in his Blake's Teneriffe victory and The Loyal Scot crude, clumsy, and bombastic, at times ridiculous, he yet always utters something worth saying. In The Loyal Scot, for example, what a grand anachronism of scorn for topographical heartburnings:

One king, one faith, one language, and one isle,

English and Scotch, 'tis all but cross and pile !

Take, again, the death-scene of Captain Douglas-bravely resigned to fate on board the burning ship he had striven to the last to save :

Down on the deck he laid himself, and died,
With his dear sword reposing by his side,
And on the flaming plank so rests his head

As one that warmed himself, and went to bed.14

The First Anniversary may be ponderous, and more. rhetorical than poetical. At the same time, it is at once a brilliant controversial defence of the title of Cromwell to reign, and a courtly recognition of him as Royal, though with no other crown than one of silver hairs:

For to be Cromwell was a greater thing

Than aught below, or yet above, a king.15

The Lament for his death, if not showing more prescience in the poet than among statesmen as to the durability of that strange palace of ice, the Protectorate, indicates a remarkable faculty for reading human nature. A portrait as true as it is beautiful is there drawn of the invincible

soldier, the sagacious, astute, and stern ruler, dying, not of age, or disease, but of sorrow for a child; a sacrifice to the wondrous softness of his heart.

'Like polished mirrors, so his steely breast
Had every figure of her woes expressed;
Fate could not either reach with single stroke,

But, the dear image fled, the mirror broke; 16

a man and a father in tenderness; yet in death a sovereign still, and of iron will:

I saw him dead: a leaden slumber lies,
And mortal sleep over those wakeful eyes;
O, human glory vain! O, Death! O, wings!
O, worthless world! O, transitory things!
Yet dwelt that greatness in his shape decayed,
That still though dead, greater than Death he laid;
And in his altered face you something feign

That threatens Death he yet will live again.17

Too disdainful of wealth to care to be a man of affairs; too truthful for a professional diplomatist; too thoughtful -silent for twenty years, not dumb, on the benches of the Commons for an orator; too good a Christian to be a fanatic; too loyal a patriot to be a partisan-Andrew Marvell neither asked nor would accept honours or possessions. Too sensible- easy philosopher', as in youth he described himself 18-to burn with sensibility; too sincere a moralist-just 'an old, honest countryman' 19—to masquerade as a mad lover; too apt even as a singer to damp down with his reason the furnace of his real inspirationwith a little more, or a little less, he might have ranked high in the inner circle of poets-or he might not have been among them anywhere. But about him, such as he is, though he heralds the descent of the grey light of common day upon English poetry for close upon a century and a half, the

sunshine flickers still. His verse, if without the halo of romance, which beams from the brows of those he championed, 'noble Lovelace', and 'mighty' Milton, blind, yet bold,20 has struck out from sympathy with genius like theirs sparks of fancy peculiarly his own. Literature would have been sadly the poorer without the Garden, the Bermudas, and the Death-song of King Charles.

The Poems of Andrew Marvell, edited by G. A. Aitken, 1898. Satires of Andrew Marvell, edited by G. A. Aitken, 1892. London: Lawrence & Bullen (The Muses' Library).

1 Upon Appleton House (Poems), vv. 603–4 and 695–6.

2 Dialogue between Thyrsis and Dorinda (Poems), vv. 47-8.

3 Damon, the Mower (Poems), vv. 73–80.

4 To his Noble Friend, Mr. Richard Lovelace (Poems).

5 The Hill and Grove at Billborow (Poems), vv. 21 2.

"The Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Fawn (Poems).

An Epitaph upon (Poems), vv. 9-20.

The Gallery (Poems), vv. 53–6

The Fair Singer (Poems), vv. 11–12.

10 On a Drop of Dew (Poems), vv. 11-14, 19–20, 22–6.

11 Bermudas (Poems).

12 The Garden (Poems), vv. 33–64.

13 An Horatian Ode-Upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland (Poems), vv. 49-52 and 57-64.

14 The Loyal Scot. Upon the Death of Captain Douglas, burned on his ship at Chatham (Poems), vv. 142–3 and 53-6.

15 The First Anniversary of the Government under His Highness the Lord Protector (Poems), vv. 225–6

16

Upon the Death of his late Highness the Lord Protector (Poems), vv. 20 and 73-6.

17 Ibid. (Poems), vv. 247-60.

18 Upon Appleton House (Poems), v. 561.

19 Translated from Seneca. Thyestes (Poems), Chorus ii, v. 11 20 On Paradise Lost (Poems), v. i.