Perfumes bathe him not, new-born;
Persian mantles not adorn;
Nor do the rich roofs look bright
With the jasper's orient light.
Where, O royal infant, be
The ensigns of thy majesty;
Thy Sire's equalizing state;
And thy sceptre that rules fate?
Where's thy angel-guarded throne,
Whence thy laws thou didst make known--
Laws which heaven, earth, hell obeyed?
These, ah! these aside he laid;
Would the emblem be--of pride
By humility outvied.
I pass by Abraham Cowley, mighty reputation as he has had, without
further remark than that he is too vulgar to be admired more than
occasionally, and too artificial almost to be, as a poet, loved at all.
Andrew Marvell, member of Parliament for Hull both before and after the
Restoration, was twelve years younger than his friend Milton. Any one of
some half-dozen of his few poems is to my mind worth all the verse that
Cowley ever made. It is a pity he wrote so little; but his was a life as
diligent, I presume, as it was honourable.
ON A DROP OF DEW.
See how the orient dew,
Shed from the bosom of the morn
Into the blowing roses,
Yet careless of its mansion new
For the clear region where 'twas born,
Round in itself encloses, _used intransitively._
And in its little globe's extent,
Frames as it can its native element.
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