MISCELLANEOUS POEMS OF ANDREW MARVELL.*

IT is delightful to have Andrew Marvell's exquisite verse put before us so attractively as it is by the Nonesuch Press. They are doing us all a great service by their noble reprints, and we hope they are going to drive their furrow right through English literature. We have had the Love Poetry of Donne. Why not the Love Poetry of Pope ? There is much more of it than people suspect, and it has in it a strange and exquisite quality. Marvell is a memorable figure. He bridged the old world and the new in poetry. He held the Elizabethans by one hand and Pope and Dryden by the other ; but all the time he kept the great manner in phrase, word and thought. There is in his verse all our litera- ture and its wonders. We get the enticing melody of Marlowe in one poem, Donne's subtlety and modernity in the next,

but without Donne's worst crankiness and affectation. Here we see the antithesis in flower ; there Elizabethan romanticism.

Most of Marvell's political poems are well known, but we want to put in a plea for " A Poem Upon the Death of 0. C."— " O. C.," of course, is Oliver Cromwell. When the reader begins upon it he is shocked and horrified at the conceits. Donne seems out-Donned in these funeral elegies and sepulchral harpings. But if one reads a little further and a little deeper, it will be found that in spite of the preposterous phraseology the Cromwell poem is a very fine piece of psychology in verse, and gives what is perhaps the best view that has ever been given of Cromwell's true nature. Tenderness of heart joined with sternness of action, a universal sympathy which without losing itself somehow turned into subtle statecraft, pacifism joined to the most competent militarism that the world has ever seen, religious mysticism allied to simple goodness. These were the qualities which made the man, of whom Dryden declared that in him piety and valour were joined in equal shares. Wonderful, too, is the political insight of the poet when he tells us how Cromwell "first put Armes into

Religion's hand " :-

" He first put Armes into Religion's hand, And tinfrous Conscience unto Courage man'd

The Souldier taught that inward Mail to wear,

And fearing God how they should nothing fear.

Those Strokes he said will pierce through all below Where those that strike from Heaven fetch their Blow.

Astonish'd armyes did their flight prepare, And eityes strong were stormed by his prayer ;

Of that for ever Preston's field shall tell The story, and impregnable Clonmell. And where the sandy mountain Penwick seed,

The sea between, yet hence his pray'r prevaird. What man was ever so in Heav'n obey'd

Since the commanded sun o'er Gibeon stay'd

In all his warrs needs must he triumph, when

He conquer'd God still ere he fought with men

Hence, though in battle none so brave or fierce, Yet him the adverse steel could never pierce.

Pity it seem'd to hurt him more that felt Each wound himself which he to others delt ; Danger itself refusing to offend So loose an enemy, so fast a friend."

That is great in spite of its very obvious faults. Striking, too, is the passage in which Marvell describes his visit to Cromwell as he lay in state, though here the extravagances of language become in one or two places absolutely ridiculous. The following passage is very interesting both in itself and because

of its near metrical approach to Dryden and Pope "Thee, many ages hence, in martial verse

Shall th' English souldier, ere he charge, rehearse ;

Singing of thee, inflame themselves to fight,

And with the name of Cromwell, armyes fright. As long as rivers to the seas shall rune, As long as Cynthia shall relieve the sunne,

While staggs shall fly unto the forests thick, While sheep delight the grassy downs to pick, As long as future time succeeds the past,

Always thy honour, praise and name, shall last."

There is one other poem which, though of high quality, is

• Miscellaneous Poems. By Andrew Marvell, Esq., late Member of the lioncrar- pie House of Commons. London: The Nonesuch Press. 116s. net'

not as well known as it ought to be. It is a fragment of translation from a chorus in one of Seneca's Tragedies :—

" Climb at Court for me that will

Tottering favor's Pinaele ;

All I seek is to lye still.

Settled in some secret Nest In calm Leisure let me rest ; And far of the publick Stage Pass away my silent Age. Thus when without noise, unknown, I have liv'd out all my span, I shall dye, without a groan, An old honest Country man. Who expos'd to other Ey's, Into his own Heart nc'er pry's, Death to him's a Strange surprise."

That was what Marvell would have liked for himself, and what

he was suited to be. But fate was unkind, and so in spite of his gentleness and love of pure literature he was always up to his neck in revolutionary politics. Yet he managed to

maintain the position of an honourable moderate in spite of adverse circumstances. He was, indeed, " the sweet singer

of Israel's trimmers." Had Halifax become a king, if we may conceive the impossible for a moment, Marvell would certainly have been his Poet Laureate. We may, indeed, say in his own words that he longed to be " an old honest Country man," but unfortunately only achieved enough of his wish to die a kind of political hanger-on of the country party. He liked both de jure kings and de facto rulers equally, and saw the good sides of both. That is why the Horatian Ode is the fairest political poem in this or any other language.

J. ST. LOE STRACIIEY.