'Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less, Withdraws into its happiness; The mind, that ocean where each kind Does straight its own resemblance find; Yet it creates, transcending these, Far other worlds, and other seas; Annihilating all that's made To a green thought in a green shade. 'Here at the fountain's sliding foot, Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root, Casting the body's vest aside My soul into the boughs does glide: There, like a bird, it sits and sings, There whets and claps its silver wings, And, till prepared for longer flight, Waves in its plumes the various light.' 'These wonderful verses,' says Mr. Palgrave of the entire poem, 'may be regarded as a test of any reader's insight into the most poetical aspects of poetry.' As a satirist it is Marvell's error to confound satire with lampoon. He has the _saeva indignatio_ which makes the avenger, but spends too much of it upon individuals. Occasionally some fine personification gives promise of better things, but the poet soon relapses into mere personalities. This may be attributed in great measure to the circumstances under which these compositions appeared. They could only be circulated clandestinely, and the writer may be excused if he did not labour to exalt what he himself regarded as mere fugitive poetry. The most celebrated of these pieces are the series of _Advices to a Painter_, in which the persons and events of the day are described to an imaginary artist for delineation in fitting, and therefore by no means flattering, colours. It is to Marvell's honour that he succeeds best with a fine subject. When, in his poems on the events of the Commonwealth, he escapes from mere sarcasm and negation, and speaks nobly upon really noble themes, he soars far above the Marvell of the Restoration, though even here his verse is marred by lapses into the commonplace, and by his besetting infirmity of an inability to finish with effect, leaving off like a speaker who sits down rather from the failure of his voice than the exhaustion of his theme. The panegyric on Cromwell's anniversary, and the poem on his death, abound nevertheless with fine, though faulty passages, of which the following may serve as an example: