Hobbinol. Come, let’s in some carol new
Pay to love and them their due.

All. Joy to that happy pair
Whose hopes united banish our despair. 
What shepherd could for love pretend,
Whilst all the nymphs on Damon’s choice attend? 
What shepherdess could hope to wed
Before Marina’s turn were sped? 
Now lesser beauties may take place
And meaner virtues come in play;
While they
Looking from high
Shall grace
Our flocks and us with a propitious eye.”

All this merriment came to an end on the 3rd of September 1658, when Oliver Cromwell died on the anniversary of Dunbar fight and of the field of Worcester.  And yet the end, though it was to be sudden, did not at once seem likely to be so.  There was time for the poets to tune their lyres.  Waller, Dryden, Sprat, and Marvell had no doubt that “Tumbledown Dick” was to sit on the throne of his father and “still keep the sword erect,” and were ready with their verses.

Westminster Abbey has never witnessed a statelier, costlier funeral than that of “the late man who made himself to be called Protector,” to quote words from one of the most impressive passages in English prose, the opening sentences of Cowley’s Discourse by way of Vision concerning the Government of Oliver Cromwell.  The representatives of kings, potentates, and powers crowded the aisles, and all was done that pomp and ceremony could do.  Marvell, arrayed in the six yards of mourning the Council had voted him on the 7th of September, was, we may be sure, in the Abbey, and it may well be that his blind colleague, to whom the same liberal allowance had been made, leant on his arm during the service.  Milton’s muse remained silent.  The vote of the House of Commons ordering the undoing of this great ceremony was little more than two years ahead. O caeca mens hominum!

Among the poems first printed by Captain Thompson from the old manuscript book was one which was written therein in Marvell’s own hand entitled “A poem upon the Death of his late Highness the Protector.”  Its composition was evidently not long delayed:—­

    “We find already what those omens mean,
    Earth ne’er more glad nor Heaven more serene. 
    Cease now our griefs, calm peace succeeds a war,
    Rainbows to storms, Richard to Oliver.”

The lines best worth remembering in the poem are the following:—­

    “I saw him dead:  a leaden slumber lies,
    And mortal sleep over those wakeful eyes;
    Those gentle rays under the lids were fled,
    Which through his looks that piercing sweetness shed;
    That port, which so majestic was and strong,
    Loose, and deprived of vigour, stretched along;
    All withered, all discoloured, pale and wan,
    How much another thing, no more that man! 
    O, human glory vain!  O, Death!  O, wings! 
    O, worthless world!  O, transitory things! 
    Yet dwelt that greatness in his shape decayed,
    That still though dead, greater than Death he laid,
    And in his altered face you something feign
    That threatens Death, he yet will live again.”