dots-menu
×

Home  »  Parnassus  »  Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)

Ralph Waldo Emerson, comp. (1803–1882). Parnassus: An Anthology of Poetry. 1880.

The Nymph Mourning her Fawn

Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)

(See full text.)

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.

I’m sure I never wished them ill;

Nor do I for all this, nor will:

But, if my simple prayers may yet

Prevail with Heaven to forget

Thy murder, I will join my tears,

Rather than fail. But, O my fears!

It cannot die so. Heaven’s King

Keeps register of every thing,

And nothing may we use in vain;

Even beasts must be with justice slain,

Else men are made their deodands.

Though they should wash their guilty hands

In this warm life-blood which doth part

From thine, and wound me to the heart,

Yet could they not be clean, their stain

Is dyed in such a purple grain.

There is not such another in

The world, to offer for their sin.

It is a wondrous thing how fleet

’Twas on those little silver feet;

With what a pretty skipping grace

It oft would challenge me the race;

And, when it 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 lovèd to be there.

Among the beds of lilies I

Have sought it oft, where it should lie,

Yet could not, till itself would rise,

Find it, although before mine eyes;

For, in the flaxen lilies’ shade,

It like a bank of lilies laid.

Upon the roses it would feed,

Until its lips e’en seemed to bleed,

And then to me ’twould boldly trip,

And print those roses on my lip.

But all its chief delight was still

On roses thus itself to fill,

And its pure virgin limbs to fold

In whitest sheets of lilies cold:

Had it lived long, it would have been

Lilies without, roses within.