Yet although Marvell loved Nature, he did not live, like Herrick, far from the stir of war, but took his part in the strife of the times.  He was an important man in his day.  He was known to Cromwell and was a friend of Milton, a poet much greater than himself.  He was a member of Parliament, and wrote much prose, but the quarrels in the cause of which it was written are matters of bygone days, and although some of it is still interesting, it is for his poetry rather that we remember and love him.  Although Marvell was a Parliamentarian, he did not love Cromwell blindly, and he could admire what was fine in King Charles.  He could say of Cromwell:—­

    “Though his Government did a tyrant resemble,
    He made England great, and his enemies tremble."*

    A dialogue between two Horses.

And no one perhaps wrote with more grave sorrow of the death of Charles than did Marvell, and that too in a poem which, strangely enough, was written in honor of Cromwell.

    “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."*

    An Horatian ode upon Cromwell’s return from Ireland.

At Cromwell’s death he wrote:—­

    “Thee, many ages hence, in martial verse
    Shall the English soldier, ere he charge, rehearse;
    Singing of thee, inflame himself to fight
    And, with the name of Cromwell, armies fright."*

    Upon the Death of the Lord Protector.

But all Marvell’s writings were not political, and one of his prettiest poems was written about a girl mourning for a lost pet.

    “The wanton troopers riding by
    Have shot my fawn, and it will die.

Ungentle men! they cannot thrive who killed thee.  Thou ne’er didst alive Them any harm:  alas! nor could Thy death yet do them any good. . . . . .  With sweetest milk and sugar, first I it at my own fingers nurs’d; And as it grew, so every day It wax’d more sweet and white than they.  It had so sweet a breath!  And oft I blushed to see its foot so soft, And white (shall I say than my hand?) Nay, any lady’s of the land. 
    It is a wondrous thing how fleet
’Twas on those little silver feet; With what a pretty skipping grace It oft would challenge me to race; And when ’t had left me far away, ’Twould stay, and run again, and stay; For it was nimbler much than hinds, And trod as if on the four winds. 
    I have a garden of my own,
But so with roses overgrown And lilies, that you would it guess To be a little wilderness; And all the spring-time of the year It only loved to be there.  Among the lilies, I Have sought it oft, where it should lie Yet could not, till itself would rise, Find it, although before