ANDREW MARVELL. 1620-1678. THE MOWER TO THE GLOW-WORM. YE living lamps, by whose dear light Her matchless song does meditate; Ye country comets, that portend Than to presage the grass's fall; Ye Glow-worms, whose officious flame To wandering mowers shows the way, That in the night have lost their aim, And after foolish flies do stray; Your courteous lights in vain you waste, For she my mind hath so displaced, SIR JOHN DENHAM. My eye descending from the Hill, surveys Where Thames among the wanton valleys strays. Thames the most loved of all the Ocean's sons By his old sire, to his embraces runs, Hasting to pay his tribute to the sea, Like mortal life to meet eternity. Though with those streams he no resemblance hold His genuine and less guilty wealth t' explore, The mower's hopes, nor mock the ploughman's toil; Brings home to us, and makes both Indies ours; So that to us no thing, no place is strange, My great example, as it is my theme! TELL me not, sweet! I am unkind, Of thy chaste breast, and quiet mind, True, a new mistress now I chase, And, with a stronger faith, embrace Yet this inconstancy is such I could not love thee, dear! so much, TO ALTHEA, FROM PRISON. WHEN Love, with unconfinèd wings, Hovers within my gates, And my divine Althea brings To whisper at the grates; LUXURIOUS man, to bring his vice in use, Did after him the world seduce; And from the fields, the flowers and plants allure, Where Nature was most plain and pure. He first enclosed within the garden's square A dead and standing pool of air; And a more luscious earth from them did knead, The pink grew then as double as his mind: With strange perfumes he did the roses taint; THE MOWER AGAINST GARDENS. The tulip white did for complexion seek, The onion root they then so high did hold, Another world was searched through oceans new, And yet these rarities might be allowed. To Man, that sovereign thing and proud, Had he not dealt between the bark and tree, Forbidden mixtures there to see. No plant now knew the stock from which it came; He grafts upon the wild the tame, That the uncertain and adulterate fruit Might put the palate in dispute. 'Tis all enforced, the fountain, and the grot, Where willing Nature does to all dispense And fauns and fairies do the meadows till, But, howsoe'er the figures do excel, The Gods themselves with us do dwell. |