ON A DROP OF DEW
by: Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)
- EE how the
orient dew
- Shed from the bosom of the Morn
- Into the blowing roses,
- Yet careless of its mansion new,
- For the clear region where twas born,
- Round in its self incloses:
- And in its little globes extent
- Frames, as it can, its native element.
- How it the purple flowr does slight,
- Scarce touching where it lyes,
- But gazing back upon the skies,
- Shines with a mournful light,
- Like its own tear,
- Because so long divided from the sphere.
- Restless it roules, and unsecure,
- Trembling, lest it grow impure;
- Till the warm sun pitty its pain
- And to the skies exhale it back again.
- So the soul, that drop, that ray,
- Of the clear fountain of eternal day,
- (Could it within the humane flowr be seen)
- Remembring still its former height,
- Shuns the sweat leaves and blossoms green,
- And, recollecting its own light,
- Does in its pure and circling thoughts express
- The greater heaven in an heaven less.
- In how coy a figure wound,
- Every way it turns away;
- (So the world-excluding round)
- Yet receiving in the day.
- Dark beneath, but bright above,
- Here disdaining, there in love.
- How loose and easie hence to go;
- How girt and ready to ascend;
- Moving but on a point below,
- It all about does upwards bend.
- Such did the mannas sacred dew destil,
- White and intire, though congeald and chill;
- Congeald on Earth; but does, dissolving, run
- Into the glories of th almighty sun.
"On a Drop of Dew" is
reprinted from The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse.
Ed. Nicholson & Lee. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1917. |
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POEMS BY ANDREW MARVELL |
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