Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)

"To His Coy Mistress"

Had we but world enough, and time,

This coyness, lady, were no crime.

We would sit down and think which way

To walk, and pass our long love's day;

Thou by the Indian Ganges' side

Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide

Of Humber would complain. I would

Love you ten years before the Flood;

And you should, if you please, refuse

Till the conversion of the Jews.

My vegetable love should grow

Vaster than empires, and more slow.

An hundred years should go to praise

Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;

Two hundred to adore each breast,

But thirty thousand to the rest;

An age at least to every part,

And the last age should show your heart.

For, lady, you deserve this state,

Nor would I love at lower rate. 

But at my back I always hear

Time's winged chariot hurrying near;

And yonder all before us lie

Deserts of vast eternity.

Thy beauty shall no more be found,

Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound

My echoing song; then worms shall try

That long preserv'd virginity,

And your quaint honour turn to dust,

And into ashes all my lust.

The grave's a fine and private place,

But none I think do there embrace. 

Now therefore, while the youthful hue

Sits on thy skin like morning dew,

And while thy willing soul transpires

At every pore with instant fires,

Now let us sport us while we may;

And now, like am'rous birds of prey, 

Rather at once our time devour,

Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power.

Let us roll all our strength, and all

Our sweetness, up into one ball;

And tear our pleasures with rough strife

Through the iron gates of life.

Thus, though we cannot make our sun

Stand still, yet we will make him run. 

"On Mr. Milton's Paradise Lost"

When I beheld the Poet blind, yet bold,

In slender Book his vast Design unfold,

Messiah Crown'd, Gods Reconcil'd Decree,

Rebelling Angels, the Forbidden Tree,

Heav'n, Hell, Earth, Chaos, All; the Argument

Held me a while misdoubting his Intent,

That he would ruine (for I saw him strong)

The sacred Truths to Fable and old Song,

(So Sampson groap'd the Temples Posts in spight)
The World o'rewhelming to revenge his Sight.
Yet as I read, soon growing less severe,
I lik'd his Project, the success did fear;
Through that wide Field how he his way should find
O're which lame Faith leads Understanding blind;
Lest he perplext the things he would explain,
And what was easie he should render vain.
Or if a Work so infinite he spann'd,
Jealous I was that some less skilful hand
(Such as disquiet alwayes what is well,
And by ill imitating would excell)
Might hence presume the whole Creations day
To change in Scenes, and show it in a Play.
Pardon me, Mighty Poet, nor despise
My causeless, yet not impious, surmise.
But I am now convinc'd, and none will dare
Within thy Labours to pretend a Share.
Thou hast not miss'd one thought that could be fit,
And all that was improper dost omit:
So that no room is here for Writers left,
But to detect their Ignorance or Theft.
That Majesty which through thy Work doth Reign
Draws the Devout, deterring the Profane.
And things divine thou treats of in such state
As them preserves, and Thee in violate.
At once delight and horrour on us seize,
Thou singst with so much gravity and ease;
And above humane flight dost soar aloft,
With Plume so strong, so equal, and so soft.
The Bird nam'd from that Paradise you sing
So never Flags, but alwaies keeps on Wing.
Where couldst thou Words of such a compass find?
Whence furnish such a vast expense of Mind?
Just Heav'n Thee, like Tiresias, to requite,
Rewards with Prophesie thy loss of Sight.
Well might thou scorn thy Readers to allure
With tinkling Rhime, of thy own Sense secure;
While the Town-Bays writes all the while and spells,
And like a Pack-Horse tires without his Bells.
Their Fancies like our bushy Points appear,
The Poets tag them; we for fashion wear.
I too transported by the Mode offend,
And while I meant to Praise thee, must Commend.
Thy verse created like thy Theme sublime,
In Number, Weight, and Measure, needs not Rhime.

"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.

The "Mower" Poems

"The Mower Against Gardens" is the first of the "Mower" sequence, an attack on the sophistications of human invention and a praise of Nature's proper mixture vs. the hybrids' "Forbidden mixtures" and "nutriment" that changes our kind. The poem's disgust with the freaks produced by science is balanced with the praise of Nature's "wild and fragrant innocence" (34).

"Damon the Mower" exploits the figure of paradox in eleven 8-line stanzas of tetrameter couplets. The mistress's "cruelty," refusing to return Damon's love, distracts the mower until his scythe does to him what he did to the grass. The figure of love as a wound also is used--it could be compared with many a Petrarchan conceit, but here it is combined with the pastoral mode.

"The Mower to the Glowworms" continues to evoke the distracting and destructive effects of love by wishing the glowworms might show the Mower the way back to himself, which he has lost in his delirium.

"The Mower's Song" continues the "mower mown" paradox of "Damon" within a more complex stanza structure. Note that, throughout the poem, Damon is unable to simply name the deed by which he makes his living ("to mow") and instead employs circumlocution.

"The Garden" returns to the praise of idealized Nature and contrasts it with the fallen state of things under human domination. The quest to re-imagine the un-fallen world leads the poet to a kind of ekstasis in which his language becomes almost nonsense: what exactly would one be thinking were one to think "a green thought in a green shade" (48). This return to Eden leads the persona to imagine God-the-Gardener and Adam as the first Gardener's helper. This has direct relevance for Milton, who was Marvell's mentor and predecessor as Cromwell's Latin Secretary.

"The Mower Against Gardens"

It begins:

Luxurious man, to bring his vice in use,

Did after him the world seduce,

And from the fields the flowers and plants allure,

Where Nature was most plain and pure.

He first enclosed within the garden's square

A dead and standing pool of air,

And a more luscious earth for them did knead,

Which stupefied them while it fed...

"Damon the Mower"

It begins:

Hark how the mower Damon sung,

With love of Juliana stung!

While everything did sem to paint

The scene more fit for his complaint.

Like her fair eyes the day was fair,

But scorching like his amorous care;

Sharp, like his scythe, his sorrow was,

And withered, like his hopes, the grass...

"The Mower to the Glowworms"

Ye living lamps, by whose dear light

The nightingale does sit so late,

And studying all the summer night

Her matchless songs does meditate,

Ye country comets, that portend

No war nor prince's funeral,

Shining unto no higher end

Than to presage the grass's fall;

Ye glowworms, whose officious flame

To wand'ring mowers shows the way,

That in the night have lost their aim,

And after foolish fires do stray;

Your courteous fires in vain you waste,

Since Juliana here is come,

For she my mind hath so displaced

That I shall never find my home. 

"The Mower's Song"

It begins:

My mind was once the true survey

Of all these meadows fresh and gay,

And in the greenness of the grass

Did see its hopes as in a glass;

When Juliana came, and she,

What I do to the grass, does to my thoughts and me.

"The Garden"

It begins:

How vainly men themselves amaze

To win the palm, to oak, or bays,

And their uncessant labors see

Crowned from some single herb or tree,

Whose short and narrow-verged shade

Does prudently their toils upbraid;

While all flowers and all trees do close

To weave the garlands of repose!

"An Horatian Ode: Upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland"

The forward youth that would appear

Must now forsake his Muses dear,

     Nor in the shadows sing

     His numbers languishing:

'Tis time to leave the books in dust

And oil th' unused armor's rust,

      Removing from the wall

      The corselet of the hall.

So restless Cromwell could not cease

In the inglorious arts of peace,

      But through adventurous war

      Urged his active star...