The Works of Andrew Marvell

Andrew Marvell
1621-1678



Andrew Marvell was born in Winestead-in-Holderness in 1621. The son of a vicar, he spent his childhood in the town of Hull and attended the Grammar School there.He subsequently attended Trinity College, Cambridge. He travelled widely following the death of his father in 1641 and spent some five years visiting Holland, Italy, France and Spain.

He was a friend of John Milton who recommended him for the post of Assistant Latin Secretary to the Council of State in 1653 - he finally got the job in 1657!

While most of his poetry was not published during his lifetime, he did have a number of satires published, notably The Rehearsal Transposed which was published in two parts and was a rebuttal of the opinions of the Archdeacon of Canterbury. Samuel Parker.

Marvell died on 16 August 1678.

Marvell is usually described as a Metaphysical poet. While it is unquestionably true that he used some fairly stretched comparisons - the soul with a dew drop in On a Drop of Dew, for example - it is not true that all his poetry is complex and difficult to understand which is a common misconception of all the metaphysical poets. He is of value then to seekers of easily understood love poetry, for example, as well as those wishing to have more challenge in their reading material!

A variety of his work is included within these pages, led off by To His Coy Mistress which appears to be a frequently set poem at schools, probably for the carpe diem (sieze the day) theme that was a common subject for poetry of that era - see also Robert Herrick.

To His Coy Mistress is a poem of two halves: the first splendidly flatters by setting out what would be proper lengths of time in which to adore her, if there was sufficient time. But having set her up, he follows on by telling her that there just isn't the time for all that "And your quaint honour turn to dust" and so they should "tear our pleasures with rough strife". Human nature hasn't changed too much over the last three hundred years but I bet few young ladies receive requests to dispense with their virginity in such a form today!

 

The Fair Singer

To make a final conquest of all me,
Love did compose so sweet an enemy,
In whom both beauties to my death agree,
Joining themselves in fatal harmony;
That while she with her eyes my heart does bind,
She with her voice might captivate my mind.

I could have fled from one but singly fair:
My disentangled soul itself might save,
Breaking the curled trammels of her hair.
But how should I avoid to be her slave,
Whose subtle art invisibly can wreath
My fetters of the very air I breath?

The Definition of Love

My love is of a birth as rare
As 'tis for object strange and high;
It was begotten by Despair
Upon Impossibility.

Magnanimous Despair alone
Could show me so divine a thing
Where feeble Hope could ne'er have flown,
But vainly flapp'd its tinsel wing.

And yet I quickly might arrive
Where my extended soul is fixt,
But Fate does iron wedges drive,
And always crowds itself betwixt.

For Fate with jealous eye does see
Two perfect loves, nor lets them close;
Their union would her ruin be,
And her tyrannic pow'r depose.

And therefore her decrees of steel
Us as the distant poles have plac'd,
(Though love's whole world on us doth wheel)
Not by themselves to be embrac'd;

Unless the giddy heaven fall,
And earth some new convulsion tear;
And, us to join, the world should all
Be cramp'd into a planisphere.

As lines, so loves oblique may well
Themselves in every angle greet;
But ours so truly parallel,
Though infinite, can never meet.

Therefore the love which us doth bind,
But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the mind,
And opposition of the stars.

A Garden

Written after the Civil Wars

See how the flowers, as at parade,
Under their colours stand display'd:
Each regiment in order grows,
That of the tulip, pink, and rose.
But when the vigilant patrol
Of stars walks round about the pole,
Their leaves, that to the stalks are curl'd,
Seem to their staves the ensigns furl'd.
Then in some flower's belovèd hut
Each bee, as sentinel, is shut,
And sleeps so too; but if once stirr'd,
She runs you through, nor asks the word.
O thou, that dear and happy Isle,
The garden of the world erewhile,
Thou Paradise of the four seas
Which Heaven planted us to please,
But, to exclude the world, did guard
With wat'ry if not flaming sword;
What luckless apple did we taste
To make us mortal and thee waste!
Unhappy! shall we never more
That sweet militia restore,
When gardens only had their towers,
And all the garrisons were flowers;
When roses only arms might bear,
And men did rosy garlands wear?





 

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