The forward youth that would appear
Must now forsake his Muses dear;
Nor in the shadows sing
His numbers languishing.
'T is time to leave the books in dust,
And oil the unused armor's rust;
Removing from the wall
The corslet of the hall.
So restless Cromwell could not cease
In the inglorious arts of peace,
But through adventurous war
Urged his active star.
And, like the three-forked lightning, first
Breaking the clouds wherein it nurst,
Did thorough his own side
His fiery way divide.
For 't is all one to courage high,
The emulous, or enemy;
And with such to enclose
Is more than to oppose.
Then burning through the air he went,
And palaces and temples rent;
And Caesar's head at last
Did through his laurels blast.
'T is madness to resist or blame
The face of angry Heaven's flame;
And, if we would speak true,
Much to the man is due,
Who, from his private gardens, where
He lived reserved and austere,
(As if his highest plot
To plant the bergamot,)
Could by industrious valor climb
To ruin the great work of time,
And cast the kingdoms old
Into another mould!
Though justice against fate complain,
And plead the ancient rights in vain,--
But those do hold or break,
As men are strong or weak.
Nature, that hateth emptiness,
Allows of penetration less,
And therefore must make room
Where greater spirits come.
What field of all the civil war,
Where his were not the deepest scar?
And Hampton shows what part
He had of wiser art;
Where, twining subtle fears with hope,
He wove a net of such a scope,
That Charles himself might chase
To Carisbrook's narrow case;
That hence the royal actor borne,
The tragic scaffold might adorn,
While round the armed bands
Did clap their bloody hands.
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.
This was that memorable hour,
Which first assured the forced power;
So when they did design
The Capitol's first line,
A bleeding head, where they begun,
Did fright the architects to run;
And yet in that the state
Foresaw its happy fate.
And now the Irish are ashamed
To see themselves in one year tamed;
So much one man can do,
That does best act and know.
They can affirm his praises best,
And have, though overcome, confest
How good he is, how just,
And fit for highest trust.
Nor yet grown stiffer by command,
But still in the Republic's hand,
How fit he is to sway
That can so well obey.
He to the Commons' feet presents
A kingdom for his first year's rents,
And, what he may, forbears
His fame to make it theirs.
And has his sword and spoils ungirt,
To lay them at the public's skirt;
So when the falcon high
Falls heavy from the sky,
She, having killed, no more does search,
But on the next green bough to perch,
Where, when he first does lure,
The falconer has her sure.
What may not, then, our isle presume,
While Victory his crest does plume?
What may not others fear,
If thus he crowns each year?
As Caesar, he, erelong, to Gaul;
To Italy as Hannibal,
And to all states not free
Shall climacteric be.
The Pict no shelter now shall find
Within his parti-contoured mind;
But from his valor sad
Shrink underneath the plaid,
Happy if in the tufted brake
The English hunter him mistake,
Nor lay his hands a near
The Caledonian deer.
But thou, the war's and fortune's son,
March indefatigably on;
And, for the last effect,
Still keep the sword erect.
Besides the force, it has to fright
The spirits of the shady night
The same arts that did gain
A power, must it maintain.
Marvell was never married. The modern critic, who affirms that bachelors
have done the most to exalt women into a divinity, might have quoted his
extravagant panegyric of Maria Fairfax as an apt illustration:--
"'T is she that to these gardens gave
The wondrous beauty which they have;
She straitness on the woods bestows,
To her the meadow sweetness owes;
Nothing could make the river be
So crystal pure but only she,--
She, yet more pure, sweet, strait, and fair,
Than gardens, woods, meals, rivers are
Therefore, what first she on them spent
They gratefully again present:
The meadow carpets where to tread,
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 beauty raised,
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,
Nor yet that wisdom could affect,
But as 't is Heaven's dialect."
It has been the fashion of a class of shallow Church and State defenders
to ridicule the great men of the Commonwealth, the sturdy republicans of
England, as sour-featured, hard-hearted ascetics, enemies of the fine
arts and polite literature. The works of Milton and Marvell, the prose-
poem of Harrington, and the admirable discourses of Algernon Sydney are a
sufficient answer to this accusation. To none has it less application
than to the subject of our sketch. He was a genial, warmhearted man, an
elegant scholar, a finished gentleman at home, and the life of every
circle which he entered, whether that of the gay court of Charles II.,
amidst such men as Rochester and L'Estrange, or that of the republican
philosophers who assembled at Miles's Coffee House, where he discussed
plans of a free representative government with the author of Oceana, and
Cyriack Skinner, that friend of Milton, whom the bard has immortalized in
the sonnet which so pathetically, yet heroically, alludes to his own
blindness. Men of all parties enjoyed his wit and graceful conversation.
His personal appearance was altogether in his favor. A clear, dark,
Spanish complexion, long hair of jetty blackness falling in graceful
wreaths to his shoulders, dark eyes, full of expression and fire, a
finely chiselled chin, and a mouth whose soft voluptuousness scarcely
gave token of the steady purpose and firm will of the inflexible
statesman: these, added to the prestige of his genius, and the respect
which a lofty, self-sacrificing patriotism extorts even from those who
would fain corrupt and bribe it, gave him a ready passport to the
fashionable society of the metropolis. He was one of the few who mingled
in that society, and escaped its contamination, and who,
"Amidst the wavering days of sin,
Kept himself icy chaste and pure."
The tone and temper of his mind may be most fitly expressed in his own
paraphrase of Horace:--
"Climb at Court for me that will,
Tottering Favor's pinnacle;
All I seek is to lie still!
Settled in some secret nest,
In calm leisure let me rest;
And, far off the public stage,
Pass away my silent age.
Thus, when, without noise, unknown,
I have lived out all my span,
I shall die without a groan,
An old, honest countryman.
Who, exposed to other's eyes,
Into his own heart ne'er pries,
Death's to him a strange surprise."
He died suddenly in 1678, while in attendance at a popular meeting of his
old constituents at Hull. His health had previously been remarkably
good; and it was supposed by many that he was poisoned by some of his
political or clerical enemies. His monument, erected by his grateful
constituency, bears the following inscription:--
"Near this place lyeth the body of Andrew Marvell, Esq., a man so
endowed by Nature, so improved by Education, Study, and Travel, so
consummated by Experience, that, joining the peculiar graces of Wit
and Learning, with a singular penetration and strength of judgment;
and exercising all these in the whole course of his life, with an
unutterable steadiness in the ways of Virtue, he became the ornament
and example of his age, beloved by good men, feared by bad, admired
by all, though imitated by few; and scarce paralleled by any. But a
Tombstone can neither contain his character, nor is Marble necessary
to transmit it to posterity; it is engraved in the minds of this
generation, and will be always legible in his inimitable writings,
nevertheless. He having served twenty years successfully in
Parliament, and that with such Wisdom, Dexterity, and Courage, as
becomes a true Patriot, the town of Kingston-upon-Hull, from whence
he was deputed to that Assembly, lamenting in his death the public
loss, have erected this Monument of their Grief and their Gratitude,
1688."
Thus lived and died Andrew Marvell. His memory is the inheritance of
Americans as well as Englishmen. His example commends itself in an
especial manner to the legislators of our Republic. Integrity and
fidelity to principle are as greatly needed at this time in our halls of
Congress as in the Parliaments of the Restoration; men are required who
can feel, with Milton, that "it is high honor done them from God, and a
special mark of His favor, to have been selected to stand upright and
steadfast in His cause, dignified with the defence of Truth and public
liberty."