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Behind, his wife stood ever fixed alone,
No more a woman, not yet quite a stone
A lasting death seized on her turning head;
One cheek was rough and white, the other red,
And yet a cheek: in vain to speak she strove ;
Her lips, though stone, a little seemed to move.
One eye was closed, surprised by sudden night,
The other trembled still with parting light :
The wind admired, which her hair loosely bore,
Why it grew stiff, and now would play no more.
To Heaven she lifted up her freezing hands,
And to this day a suppliant pillar stands.
She tried her heavy foot from ground to rear,
And raised the heel, but her toes rooted there.
Ah! foolish woman! who must always be
A sight more strange than that she turned to see!

NOTES.

251. Lot and Zoar. See Gen. xix.
261. Admired, wondered. Cf. Bacon,
note to 'admiration,' page 142; and

Milton, Par. Lost,

255

260

265

690. Awkwardly placed between 'wind' and qualifying clause.

THE GRASSHOPPER.

(Translated paraphrastically out of ANACREON.")

Happy insect! what can be

In happiness compared to thee?

Fed with nourishment divine,
The dewy morning's gentle wine!
Nature waits upon thee still,
And thy verdant cup does fill;
"Tis filled wherever thou dost tread,
Nature's self's thy Ganymede.

Thou dost drink, and dance, and sing,
Happier than the happiest king!
All the fields which thou dost see,
All the plants, belong to thee;
All that summer-hours produce,
Fertile made with early juice:
Man for thee does sow and plough;
Farmer he, and landlord thou!

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10

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Dost neither age nor winter know :

But when thou'st drunk, and danced, and sung

Thy fill, the flowery leaves among,

(Voluptuous, and wise withal,

Epicurean animal!)

Sated with thy summer feast,
Thou retir'st to endless rest.

NOTES.

8. Ganymede, a beautiful youth who was carried off to heaven to be the cup-bearer of Zeus.

32. Epicurean. As if a follower of Epicurus, a celebrated Greek philo

30

sopher (342-270 B.C.); taking life after the pleasant fashion recommended, not indeed by Epicurus himself, but by some of his degenerate followers.

TWO VIEWS OF OLIVER CROMWELL.

(From the opening of A Discourse, by way of Vision, concerning the Government of Oliver Cromwell.)

It was the funeral day of the late man who made himself to be called Protector. And though I bore but little affection, either to the memory of him, or to the trouble and folly of all public pageantry, yet I was forced by the importunity of my company to go along with them, and be a spectator of that solemnity, the expectation of which had been so great that it was said to have brought some very curious persons (and no doubt singular virtuosos) as far as from the Mount in Cornwall, and from the Orcades. I found there had been much

more cost bestowed than either the dead man, or indeed death itself, could deserve. There was a mighty train of black assistants, among which, too, divers princes in the persons of their ambassadors (being infinitely afflicted for the loss of their brother) were pleased to attend; the hearse was magnificent, the idol crowned, and (not to mention all other ceremonies which are practised at royal interments, and therefore by no means could be omitted here) the vast multitude of spectators made up, as it uses to do, no small part of the spectacle itself. But yet, I know not how, the whole was so managed that, methought, it somewhat represented the life of him for whom it was made; much noise, much tumult, much expense, much magnificence, much vainglory; briefly, a great show, and yet, after all this, but an ill sight. At last (for it seemed long to me, and like his short reign too, very tedious) the whole scene passed by; and I retired back to my chamber, weary, and, I think, more melancholy than any of the mourners. Where I began to reflect on the whole life of this prodigious man; and sometimes I was filled with horror and detestation of his actions, and sometimes I inclined a little to reverence and admiration of his courage, conduct, and success; till, by these different motions and agitations of mind, rocked, as it were, asleep, I fell at last into this vision; or if you please to call it but a dream, I shall not take it ill, because the father of poets tells us, even dreams, too, are from God.

But sure it was no dream; for I was suddenly transported afar off (whether in the body, or out of the body, like St Paul, I know not), and found myself on the top of that famous hill in the island Mona, which has the prospect of three great, and not long since most happy, kingdoms. As soon as ever I looked on them, the Notlong-since struck upon my memory, and called forth the

sad representation of all the sins, and all the miseries, that had overwhelmed them these twenty years. And I wept bitterly for two or three hours; and, when my present stock of moisture was all wasted, I fell a sighing for an hour more; and, as soon as I recovered from my passion the use of speech and reason, I broke forth, as I remember, (looking upon England), into this complaint.

[Here follows his complaint, in eight stanzas of poetry.]

I think I should have gone on, but that I was interrupted by a strange and terrible apparition; for there appeared to me (arising out of the earth, as I conceived) the figure of a man taller than a giant, or indeed than the shadow of any giant in the evening. His body was naked, but that nakedness adorned, or rather deformed all over, with several figures, after the manner of the ancient Britons, painted upon it: and I perceived that most of them were the representation of the late battles in our civil wars, and (if I be not much mistaken) it was the battle of Naseby that was drawn upon his breast. His eyes were like burning brass, and there were three crowns of the same metal (as I guessed), and that looked as red-hot too, upon his head. He held in his right hand a sword that was yet bloody, and nevertheless the motto of it was Pax quæritur bello;1 and in his left hand a thick book, upon the back of which was written in letters of gold, Acts, Ordinances, Protestations, Covenants, Engagements, Declarations, Remonstrances, &c. Though this sudden, unusual, and dreadful object might have quelled a greater courage than mine, yet so it pleased God (for there is nothing bolder than a man in a vision) that I was not at all daunted, but asked him resolutely and briefly: What art thou?' And he said: 'I am called the North-west Principality, his Highness, 1'Peace is sought by war;' we wage war in order to establish peace.'

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the Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the dominions belonging thereunto; for I am that angel to whom the Almighty has committed the government of those three kingdoms which thou seest from this place.' And I answered and said: If it be so, sir, it seems to me that for almost these twenty years past, your highness has been absent from your charge: for not only if any angel, but if any wise and honest man had since that time been our governor, we should not have wandered thus long in these laborious and endless labyrinths of confusion, but either not have entered at all into them, or at least have returned back ere we had absolutely lost our way; but instead of your highness, we have had since such a protector as was his predecessor Richard the Third to the king his nephew; for he presently slew the commonwealth, which he pretended to protect, and set up himself in the place of it: a little less guilty indeed in one respect, because the other slew an innocent, and this man did but murder a murderer. Such a protector we have had as we would have been glad to have changed for an enemy, and rather received constant Turk, than every month's apostate; such a protector as man is to his flocks, which he shears, and sells, or devours himself; and I would fain know what the wolf, which he protects him from, could do more. Such a protector'and as I was proceeding, methought, his highness began to put on a displeased and threatening countenance, as men use to do when their dearest friends happen to be traduced in their company; which gave me the first rise of jealousy against him, for I did not believe that Cromwell among all his foreign correspondences had ever held any with angels. However, I was not hardened enough yet to venture a quarrel with him then; and therefore (as if I had spoken to the Protector himself in White

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