than his practical joke, and more than the heart that was light in so
burly a frame--we have lost with these the wild humour that wore so well
the bonds of two equal lines, and was wild with so much order, invention,
malice, gaiety, polish, equilibrium, and vitality--in a word, the
Couplet, the couplet of the past. We who cannot stand firm within two
lines, but must slip beyond and between the boundaries, who tolerate the
couplets of Keats and imitate them, should praise the day of Charles II
because of Marvell's art, and not for love of the sorry reign. We had
plague, fire, and the Dutch in the Medway, but we had the couplet; and
there were also the measures of those more poetic poets, hitherto called
somewhat slightingly the Cavalier poets, who matched the wit of the
Puritan with a spirit simpler and less mocking.

It was against an English fortress, profoundly walled, that some
remembered winter storms lately turned their great artillery. It was a
time of resounding nights; the sky was so clamorous and so close, up in
the towers of the seaside stronghold, that one seemed to be indeed
admitted to the perturbed counsels of the winds. The gale came with an
indescribable haste, hooting as it flew; it seemed to break itself upon
the heights, yet passed unbroken out to sea; in the voice of the sea
there were pauses, but none in that of the urgent gale with its hoo-hoo-
hoo all night, that clamoured down the calling of the waves. That lack
of pauses was the strangest thing in the tempest, because the increase of
sound seemed to imply a lull before. The lull was never perceptible, but
the lift was always an alarm. The onslaught was instant, where would it
stop? What was the secret extreme to which this hurry and force were
tending? You asked less what thing was driving the flocks of the storm
than what was drawing them. The attraction seemed the greater violence,
the more irresistible, and the more unknown. And there were moments when
the end seemed about to be attained.