Articles For Poems

8/19/2019 Articles For Poems

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I N N O C E N C E AND E X P E R I E N C E INT H E P O E T RY OF A N D R E W M A RV E L L

GEORGE DE F. LORD

A N D R E W M A RV E L L is the most enigmatic of English writers. Aubrey tells us that hewas merry and cherry-cheeked, but that he would not drink in company, keeping,nevertheless, some bottles of wine in his lodgings to refresh his spirits and exalt his muse .Nearly all the poems on which his fame depends were not published until after his death,and, if they circulated in manuscript during his lifetime, they made nothing like theimpression that Do nne s Songs and Sonnets did. Even when they were publishedposthumously in 1681, MarvelFs poetry met, as far as we can tell, with indiftc rence. Thefact that so many extant copies of the folio lack the portrait suggests that interest inMarvell was confined to the political figure and not the poet.

MarvelPs lyrics are as nearly anonymo us as lyric poetry can be, despite their imagina-tive and intellectual brilliance. I get no sense in Marvell of that debonair ostentation ofpersonality found in Donne, or the intimate meditative voice of Herbert , or the naughtywhimsicality of Herrick, or the suave courtliness of Carew. Even in the political poemsthere is scarcely a trace of that social tone which Dr\den was making a sine cju non f)f thegenre. Oddly enough, the closest Marvell comes to an expression of personal feeling is inhis formal tributes to Cromwell: he First Ann ivasary and Upon the Death of the LordProtector The solicitude and grief which they express may, indeed, correspond to theindignation that fuels his post-Restoration satires in verse and prose.

I suggest then an anomaly: that MarvelPs lyrics are impersonal and that personalfeelings come out only when he is engaged in vital pub lic ma tters, and from this I woulddraw the conclusion that Marvell was the least egotistical of poets and one of the mostpassionately patriotic. For him , as well as for Dryden, the British constitution was the Ark,which is death to touch, however differently they may have construed constitutionalfundamentals.

Like many others whom Marvell has fascinated, I have tried over the years to makeconnections between the superlative lyric poet, the diplomat, the associate of Fairfax andCromwell, the friend and defender of Milton, the Foreign Office Secretary theindefatigable M.P. sometimes rebuked for disorderly behaviour in the House theclandestine agent of a pro-D utch fifth column, the often boisterous, not to say obscenesatirist, and the beleaguered defender of Britain s freedom. I have even tried to trace anevolutionary process from the lyrics to the poems on affairs of state, from retirement to

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Fig I Andrew iMarvcIl, i\ 1660.{Reproduced by courtesy of the Kingston upon Hull City Museums and Art Galleries

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action, bu t I mu st confess that w hat I took for process may simply have been a chang e ofoccupation.

Faced with Mar vell s anonym ousncs s and his extraord inary career, I am struck w ithtwo salient aspects of his character: his versatility (sometimes construed wrongly asinconstancy) and his devotion to truth. His versatility was exemplified by the splendid

M arvell exhibition in the British Li br ary ; his devotion to tru th , as I shall try to show,entails a profound and sensitive awareness of the claims of the ideal and the possible, ofinnocence and experience.

Even the most casual reader of English poetry is likely to remember two poems byMarvell: Fo his Coy Mistress and The Garden. Among the best-known lyrics of theseventeenth century — certainly the most intensively criticized and in terpr eted in ourera—these two poems are the best of their kinds. To his Coy Mistress is the outstan dingpoem dealing with the persuasion to love; The Garden is pre-eminent among a host ofpoems exploring the delights of rural retirement and contemplation. While one celebratesdisengagement from the pressures of the moment, the other proposes the most intense

surrender to them imaginable.Marvell s achievement in these two contrasting modes raises an obvious but important

question: is there any significant connection between the pastoral evocation of asexual,vegetable tranquillity and the urgent invitation to engage in a moment of sexual ecstasy?Faced with contrary positions such as, T w o Paradises twere in one / T o live in Paradisealone - and

Let us roll all our Strength, and allOur sweetness, up into one Ball:And tear our Pleasures with rough strife,Thorough the Iron gates of Life.

must we conclude that Marvell, like the Milton of L\\llegy


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There like ;i IJirtl it sirs, and sings.Then whcls, iind cotiibs its silver Wings;Anil, lill prcpar d for longer (light,\\ .i\cs in Its Plumes the various Light.

( .nn\ crscK , ihc ION cr in ' \i hts Coy Mistress begins by imagining an infinitude of t ime a

N p.Kc in WIIILII he mig ht co ndu ct his courts hip at just such a leisurely pac e: l.ul we hut World enough, and Time,Th is c()) ness Liuh were no crime.We would sit down, iind think which wayTo walk, and pass our long Loves Day.Thou h\ the /ni/mu (uuigcs sideShn uld si Rubies find: I by the Tid eO t lliiuihcr would complain. I wouldLo\c you ten \ears before the Mood:And you should, if you please, refuseTill the Conversion of theJ^CH .s.My vegetable Love should grow\ aster than Kmpires, and more slow.

Stich WO rld en oug h, and Ti m e can exist, how ever, only in fantasy. In fact, all the locan anticipate at the end of their brief lives is D ese rts of vast E tern ity . Better, th enseize the moment and make up by intensity for the imagined extension in time and spwhich niiirt.ilit\ denies them:

Thus, though we cannot make our SunStand still, yet we will make him run.

Tlu- predatory and incontinent lovers at the end of the poem embody the single-minconcentration on the satisfactions of the moment that resembles the uncessant Laboof the worldlings in The Garden.

Hoth poems, then, confront unbridled human aspirations with temporal realitiespursuit of a qualified fulfilment. In both the innocence (or naivete) of unlimited hope corrected by the severely limited view of experien ce. Both p oems lead us throu gh a proby which the vanity of human wishes is exposed to the facts of mortal life.

If there is a comm on theme runn ing through the best of Marv ell s lyric poems it isreconciliation of the opposin g claims of innocence and exp erience. T h e eye of innocencsingle, a \ irtue to be sure, bu t also a shortcom ing. Ex perien ce, on the o ther han d

afflicted by ambiguity, something close to the vain Head, and double Heartoi A Dialoguebetween the Soul and B ody, Innocence produces th unison and melody of Bermudaexperience the harmony of discords celebrated in Musicks Empire. Innocence is oftesatisfied with its con dition , even to the point of soun ding a little smug , like the R esoSoul rejecting the temptations of Created Pleasure:

A Soul that knowes not to presumeIs Heaven s and its own perfume.

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Ex perien ce, on the o ther han d, is restless and dissatisfied, like the Body in . / Dialoguebetween the Soul and Body:

What but a Soul could have the witTo build me up for Sin so it ?

The contentment of innocence derives from self-containment, like the Soul in On a Dropoj eWy which

Round in its self incloses:And in its little Globes Extent,

Frames as it ean its native Element.

Experience, however, is riven by inner conflict, like the speaker in The Coronet who isdismayed to find, intertw ined in the garland he has woven for his Saviou r, wr eaths otFame and Interest .

If the contend ing claims of innocence and experience are found at the heart of M arve ll sbest poem s, we scarcely need to be remind ed that the issues are fundamen tal to the hu mancondition, however divertingly they may sometimes be treated. Nor need we be reminded,thanks to Cleanth Brooks, that wit can be compatible with high seriousness. What is atstake in M arvell is the need to harm onize the idealism of innocence with the awareness ofreality characteristic of experience.

The more intense and discriminating the dialectic of thought and feeling on both sides,the more intense the r eade r s respo nse. With this in mind we can dism iss from ourdiscussion a handful of poems which fail to develop much dialectical intensity, thosecelebrating a more or less tranquil innocence, such as A Dialogue ̂ between the ResolvedSoul and Created Pleasure On a Dnip oj Dew and Bermudas and such cynical, lihertnipoems as Thyrsis and orinda and Alourning.

Assum ing that M arvell s most interesting po ems are those which com bine the m ostexquisite balance between contending forces with the maximum of imaginative power, wemight first consider poems where the balance of power is relatively uneven.

One such is The Coronet M arvell s m ost H erbert-like poem, which explores thelabyrinthine divarications of the will as it seeks to contrive a tribute to the di\ine only todiscover that the proffered coronet is a hopeless tangle of vanity and self-interest.Deliverance can come only through a self-annihilating submission to Christ:

But thou who only could st the Serpent tame,

Either his slippVy knots at once untie.And disintangle all his winding Snare:Or shatter too with him my curious frame:

When inextricable confusion of motives confronts the absolute of redeeming Gracethere is no contest, and yet the poem remains as a brilliant memorial to its creation andrejection.

More painful is the dilemma in Upon Appkton House ̂whe re, in a qu est for lost

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Patadise, iM.ir\ell , at first siglii , appears to undergo the contemplative retirement of The

Htil I, re lir in g from th e l'"lood.Ta ke Sanctu. ir) in the Wo od;And, while it lasts, my self itiibark

In ihis \cl green, )ct growing Ark;

^ et the nat ure in which he seeks lost inn ocen ce is distu rbing ly am big uo us. Th er e is an ' ta inted ' b\ the ^Triiihir-ll orni, wiihin it hrecK, and the security he hopes to find suggea l . tb \ rin th ine e n th ra lm ent :

The ()ak-Lca\cs me cnihioNticr all,Hetween whieh (Caterpillars erawl:And I\\, with familiar trails.Me licks, and clasps, anJ curies, and hales.

In pursuing an ecstatic l iberation of the spirit , as in 7he Garden, he seems to hav

consig ned himself to a l iedonistic bo nda ge touc hed w ith m aso ch ism :

Hind me \c If fuJhini s in \nur iwmes.Curie tnc about \e gadding / incs.And Oh so close your Cireles laee,1 hat I may never leave this Place:But, lest \our I'cttcrs prove too weak.Ere I your Silken Bondage break.Do you, O Bi timh/cs, chain me too.And courteous lirnirs nail me through.

Clearh this is a t ra \e s t \ of coniem piat ive ret i rem ent , with solipsism m asqu eradingspiritu al reflection a nd narcissism disgu ised as self-disco very. T h e situatio n is reflectedthe description of the flooded R i\e r \ \ l iarfe, which runs th roug h the mead ow s belApp l e ton House :

. . . a a iiysld Mirnit/r s l i c k ;

\\ here all things gaze themselves, and doubtIf they be in it or without.And for his shade whieh therein shines,\ariissiis like, the Su n too pines.

Having projected its egotism on the sun, the infatuated ego returns to contemplating

own his t r ionics:Oh what a Pleasure 'tis to hedgeMy Temples here with heavy sedge;Abandoning my lazy Side,Streteht as a Bank unto the Tide;

Abandoned to the idleness of piscatory eclogue, 'While a t my Lines the Fishes twangMarvell is disconcerted by the advent of the young Maria Fairfax, heir to Apple

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House and its genius loci. Her untainted innocence has the power to put an end lo thedizzying metamorphoses we have witnessed, for

But by her Flames in eaven try d.Nature is wholly vilriji\l.

M aria s eye is single, she can distinguish w ithin and wi tho ut and restore her tu tor spower of discrimiriation. In celebrating her dedication to a public career in service to some universal good , M arvell may also have been bidding farewell to the private and selfretlective themes with w hich his lyric poems had been concerned. W ith subject and object, wi thin and w itho ut restored to their proper places, the poem seems to arrive at a point ofview that sees a loss of innocence in a retirement too long protracted at a time when publicresponsibilities beckon. The usual association of innocence with retirement andexperience with involvement in affairs is now reversed, and the poet seems to beanticipating the commitment to public service from which he never turned back. For theremainder of his life, as a Foreign Secretary under Cromwell, as M.P. for Hull, assecretary to the Earl of Carlyle on a mission to Moscow, and as political pamphleteer andsatirist, he was to compile the record as a patriot which, for two and a half centuries,overshadowed his achievement as a lyric poet.

From the perspective of Upon Appleton House with its resolution of the claims ofretirement and involvement in favour of the latter, we can look back on a group of pastoralpoems where the conflict of innocence and experience seems to result in a deadlock.M arvell s mo we r poems are recognized as sort ot subspecies of pastoral, w ith the mow ertaking the place of the traditional shepherd. The substitution of mower for a shepherdmay seem an insignificant one unless we see that the pastoral innocence of the shepherdgives way to a more qualified innocence in the mower. The shepherd, at least according tothe convention, pursues the most passive of occupations, but the mower is active andaggressive, and the fact that he cuts down the grass, that ubiq uitous green em blem of hopein Marvell, makes him a more complicated figure in the pastoral landscape. He may bemore complex, but he is also naive:

My Mind was once the true surveyOf ll these Medows fresh and gay;And in the greenness of the G rassDid see its Hopes as in a Glass;When Jii/uma came, and She

What I do to the Grass, does to my Thoughts and Me.

T he h auntin g refrain, in which the mower associates his occupation w ith Julia na sdevastation of his ho pes, implies a link between loss of innocence and the m ow er s task.The blessed leisure of the pastoral shepherd has given way to the cursed labour of fallenman. Of this connection the mower is clearly unaw are: he can only juxtapose w hat he doesto the grass and what Juliana does to him.

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In Damon the Mower the t ransformation from inno cence to experience is made morexpl ic i t :

Hcark how the Mower amon Sung,With love oi Juliana stungWhile ev'ry ihing did seem to paintThe Scene tiiore fit for his complaint.Like her fair l'"yes the day was fair;Hut seorehing like his am'rous Care.Sharp like his Sythe his Sorrow was.And wither'd like his Hopes the Grass.

In the grass withered l ike D am on 's hopes M arvel l has modified the pastoral co nven tioExiled from a fictional world devoted to idyllic love, the m o w e r is baffled by unrequi tepassioii , while Juliana, a figment of that world, is condi t ioned by its convent ions torespond only to the o\ er tures of shepherd s . Marve l l ' s mower, who has b lund ered into thepastoral world, is thus the \ i c t im of generic special izat ion. Presumably, Jul iana can

even hear his song . She is on ano ther wave length , as it were .D o o m e d to an isolation unwittingly created by his occupa t ion , Da mo n can only dire

his frustrated passion at 'De p opu l a t i n g all the G rou nd ' . U nreq ui ted love dr ives him togenoc ide , but that br ings no relief and his passion is finally and inevi tably turned upohimself:

The edged Stele by earcless chan ceDid into his own Ankle glanee;And there among the Grass fell down,Hy his own Sythe, the Mower mown.

In Mar \e i r s \ ege tab le wor ld those who live by the scythe perish by the scy the , as D a m orealizes in a final e pi ph an y:

( )n l \ for him no (AH'C is found.W ho m jH//i///(/.v l'Acs do wound .'Tis death alone that this must do :For Death thou art a Mower too.

In The Mower to the Glo Worms Damon moves a little further along the line frominnocence to experience. He begins by evoking poignantly an earlier state in which heseemed to live in harmony with nature and ends with a recognition of the hopeless

disorientation and alienation which Juliana has brought into his life:

Ye living Lamps, by whose dear lightThe Nightingale does sit so late.And studying all the Summer-night,Her matchless Songs does meditate;

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iiYe Country Comets, that portendNo War, nor Prinees funeral.Shining unto no higher endThan to presage the Grasses fall;

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Ye Glo-wotms, whose officious FlameTo wandring Mowers shows the way.That in the Night have lost their aim.And after foolish Fires do stray;

Your courteous Lights in vain you waste.Since JulidJia het"e is eome.For She my Mind hath so displae'd

That I shall never find my home.As a solitary reaper in a pastoral world Damon has no choice but to submit to his home-lessness.

Given the narrow limits of the genre and the limited awareness of the naive mower,these poems strike a delicate balance between the poles of innocence and experience.

A quite different treatment of the same themes is to be found in The NymphComplaining for the Death of her Faun. Unlike the terse Damon, the Nymph responds tothe withering of her hopes w ith a flood of ma nnerist conceits rem iniscent of Crashaw. Th ispoem won the heart of Edgar Allen Poe: 'How truthful an air of deep lamentation hangshere upon every gentle syllable It pervades all. It comes over the sweet melody of thewords, over the gentleness and grace which we fancy in the little maiden herself evenover the half-playful, half-petulant air with which she lingers on the beauties and goodqualities of her favorite—like the cool shadow of summer cloud over a bed of lilies andviolets'. This fatuous rhapsody, which appeared in the Southern Literary essenger forAugust 1836, may suggest some reasons why Marvell's poetry had to wait so long forproper appreciation. Certainly, if The Nymph Complaining were as Poe saw it, it wouldnever have received the extensive and distinguished attention that later critics have givenIt. Poe failed to see that the naive effusions of the little maiden are qualified both by herown hyperboles and by Marvell's sympathetic but also ironic awareness of theimplications of her reaction to the events she deplores. A critic who construe s the poem asan allegory of the Crucifixion also misses the qualifications of irony. No doubt, as othershave suggested, the poem does allude to the Song of Songs and to Ascanius's slaying ofSylvia's faun in Aeneid vii, but it is to be unders tood in its own term s. It is essential to keepin mind that it presents the emotional, intellectual, and imaginative/)/0(-f5.s- by which theinnocent n ymph tries to deal with a devastating experience. Process is affirmed in the title,which is not The Nymph s Complaint but The Nymph s Complaining. Unlike Marvell'sothe r poem s of loss of innocence, w here the point of view is retrospectiv e, this elegy —in

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the opening and closing sections, at any rate- moves in time with the nymph s experience

of ihe iiitin's d> ing:() help () help I see il faint:And dye as calmely as a Saint.See how it weeps. The Tears do come

Sad, sliiwl> dropping like a Gumme.So weeps the wounded Halsome: soThe hoh iM'ankinecnse doth flow.'Lhe brotherless //t hiu/fsMelt in such Amber Tears as these.

'Lhe slow tiiovement of the verse is par t of ano ther process of t ransforma tion, in the coursof whicb tears and d rops of blood, like gutn and f rankincense, are gradua lly con gealed inthe immobility of art, represented by the s ta tues of faun and nym ph which the nymphfinally imagines at the end of the poem . In addi t ion to th is re tardat ion of process we find agrowing aesthetic distance between the e \ en t and the nymph ' s response to it in herelegantly learned reference to Phaeto n 's s is ters as The brother less Heliades\ The nympIS not as naive as she makes herself out to be, and there is even a suggestion in thit ransformation of personal exp erience into myt h, that she derives some pleasure from herskill as artist . The poem implies then that the price of art is the loss of innocence , or at leasthe gaining of a wider awareness.

Marvel l is the least sentimental of Engl ish poets . His awareness , in Eliot 's famouphrase, ' involves , probably, a recognition, implicit in the expression of every experiencof other kinds of experience which are possible ' . A s t riking ap preciat ion of this quality isfound in Hemingway's a l lusion to Marvel l in Farewell t .-Jrw.v (1929).' On the eveofh idepar ture for what turn s out to be the rout of the allied forces at Cnpore t to , Lt. Hen ry andCatherine HarckiN are spending the n ight at a hotel in M i l a n :

'Lhe waiter c.imc and took away the things. Afier a while we were \ery still and we eould hear therain. Down below on lhe street a motor ear honked.

'But at my back I always hearTimes winged chariot hurrying near.'

1 said.'I know the poem^ Catherine said. It s by Marvell. But it s about a girl who wo uldn 't live wi

a man.

The sound of the horn evidently sets the train of association going in Lt. Henry s memory,but the unmentioned link is the allusion in The Waste Land to The sound of horns andmotors, which shall bring / Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring . In quoting MarvelFsfamous couplet while suppressing Eliot s desolate version of it Hemingway s youngofficer brilliantly exemplifies the ironic complexity of response in Marvell whichEliot had identified in his essay. The innocence of Hemingway s lovers is thusdisturbingly qualified by two voices of experience, that of Marvell s lover and that ofEliot s Tiresias.

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Unlike Hemingway, Marvell never pursues the dialectic of innocence and experience toa tragic conclusion . Instead , he usually brings the conflict to some sort of resolution or, atleast, to some kind of existential adjustment. Where neither of the parties concerned iscapable of concessions there m ay be painful but comic deadlock , as in A ialogue hetweenthe Soul and Body. Here neither party is capable of recognizing any kind of experience

but its own, and the result is utter incompatability between two balanced sets ofparadoxes:

O Who shall, from this Dungeon, raiseA Soul enslaved so many wayes?With bolts of Bones, that fetterM standsIn Feet; and manacled in Hands.Here bUnded with an Eye; and thereDeaf with the drumming of an Ear.A Soul hung up, as twere, in ChainsOf Nerves, and Arteries, and Veins.Tortur d, besides each other part.In a vain Head, and double Heart.

O who shall me deliver whole.From bonds of this Tyrannic Soul ^Whieh, streteht upright, impales me so.That mmc own Precipice I go;And warms and moves this needless Frame:(A Fever eould but do the same.)And, wanting where its spight to try.Has made me live to let me dye.

A Body that could never rest.Since this ill Spirit it possest.

This wit ty di lemma prompted some anonymous reader of Bodleian copy to cross out thelast four l ines of the poem in which Body complains.

What but a Soul could have the witTo build me up for Sin so fit?So Architects do square and hewGreen Trees that in the Forest grew.

In the margin he wro te, De sun t m ulta (A great deal is missing ). I assume that he wasperturbed at the idea that Body should have the last word in the exchange.

In The efinition of Love his most metaphysical poem, Marvell goes a step beyond thedeadlock of Soul and Body. Here Fate opposes the consummation of perfect love. Herethe contending forces of innocence and experience are deadlocked, but Marvell contrivesto make of this seemingly hopeless situation a qualified victory for the forces of innocenceand ideal love. T h e obstacle of Fate or Im po ssib ility paradoxically guaran tees the

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cont inuing perfect ion of love: the Donncan tour deforce makes intractable opposi t ion thpreservat ive of the ideal, l rustrat io n becomes a higher vir tue than frui t ion:

My Love is of a hirth as rareAs tis for object strange and high:It was hegotten by despairUpon Impossibility.

T h e totie in which this arcane secret is prese nted is austere and private . Rarely dM ar\e l l seem to addres s anyone in par t icular. H e is mu ch m ore soli tary than D on ne. Hmetaphoric terms are often absolute in their abstractncss, unqualified by sensuorichness or appe al. T h e only emo tion in the poem is expresse d in the c on tem ptu odismissal of Hope:

Magnanimous Despair aloneCould show me so divine a thing.Where feeble H ope could ne er have flownBut vainly flapt its Tinsel \\ ing.

The impotence of hope finds prosodic expression in the exhausted series of short is itsTinsel \ \ ing , which is contrasted w ith the sonorous energy of M agn anim ous Despalon e . Even mo re effective is the process by which H op e is rendered hopeless as feebleness is und erscore d by the triple rhym e o f n e er have flown with D esp air alonwhile the usual associations of hope are conferred mag nanim ously upon despair.

Stil l , the poet continues, he might achieve his object without hope, were it not for Fa

And yet I quickly might arriveWhere my extended Soul is fixt.Hut Fate does Iron wedges drive.And alwaics crouds it self betwixt.

Hav ing met m agn anim ous despair and hopeless hope we are not , perhap s, too surpr isedencou nter a Fate character ized as an anxious, small-m inded busy body and som ething o aspoilsport. The expansi\c energies of the first two lines are blocked by the obstructioperatio n t)f I ate erou d[in gj i t self b etw ixt , wh ile i ts envio us insec urity beco mes explin the next stanza:

For Fate with jealous Eye does seeTwo perfect Loves; nor lets them elose;Their union would her ruine be.And her Tyrannick pow depose.

Lim itatio ns of vision may be implicit in Fa te s single Ey e . She ha s, non e the less, goreason to be anxious. Even when held apart by her opposition the polar lovers define world of love:

And therefore her Decrees of SteelUs as the d istant Poles have plac d(Though Loves whole World on us doth wheel)Not by themselves to be embraced.

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I don t think it is over-ingenious to see the parentheses bracketing the line ^Though Loveswhole World on us doth wheel as represe nting the two hem ispheres of that world of lovewhich a union of the lovers would destroy. In this magnanimous and self-denyingrecognition there also seems to be an allusion to Do nn e s famous observation that

Dull sublunary lovers loveWhose soul is sense, cannot admitAbsence, cause it doth retnoveThose things which elemented it.

Th e late J. B . Leishman^ m akes the comparison with Do nne s poem to show thatM arvell s poem is essentially an ingenious series of conceits on the time-ho noured them eof impossibility in love. I am inclined to prefer the idea that, having once postulated aperfect love, Marvell then takes the metaphorical commonplaces of the genre, the polesthat link and separate the lovers, the microcosm of love, the opposition of fate, and so on,to construct a model that repres ents so precisely the existential and emotional dilemma of

the lover. Innocent aspirations, blocked by Fate, lead to a more sublime innocence testedby experience:As Lines so Lo\es ohlujuc may wellThemselves in every Angle greet:But ours so truly ParalelThough infinite can never meet.

The definition ends with a concluding statement as precise and satisfying as thecompletion of proposition in geometry:

Therefore the Love which us doth bind.

Hut Fate so enviously debarrs,Is the Conjunction of the Mind,And Opposition of the Stars.

Th e sublimity of this conclusion is, of course , qualified by the underly ing iron ic awarenessthat Fate s power does not depend on her keeping the lovers apart. Like D on ne, Marvelldramatizes the boundless egotism of the lover by hyperbole, but, once we grant him thesublime innocence of his love and the hostility of Fate, the rigorous precision of hisdefinition leads inevitably and satisfyingly to such a conclusion.

Somewhat the same antagonism between innocence and experience, between realityand the ideal, is at the heart of the famous Horatian Ode upon romweFs Return fromIreland. Like most of M arvell s poems , the de was not published during his lifetime, andhe wrote it, I believe, in order to come to grips with an extrem ely difficult politicalsituation. Here was a dilemma which demanded a decision for or against Cromwell. Apractical solution to the dilemma must be achieved without sacrificing principle. In hismeteoric career seen from the perspective of the summer of 1650 Cromwell had seized theleadership of the Parliamentary forces, captured and executed the king, defeated the Irishand was about to invade Scotland . T he issue, as M arvell defines it, is whether or not a loyal

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iMiglishnian can support Cromwell, and it turns on the opposition between the 'helR ig hr lepiv sen tetl In lh e tiead Ch arles 1 and the ove rwh elm ing might of C^romwel

Though Justice against I ' ate complain,And plead the aniicnt Righis in vain:

Hut those do hold or hieakAs Men are strong or weak.

Nature that haicth emptiness.Allows of pen etra tion less :

And therefore must make room\\ here gteater Spir i ts eome.

'Certainly' , as Professor allace say s, 'a doc trin e of necessity is bein g emp loy ed to couthe cause of just ice , b u t . . . it may be more accurate to emphasize M arvel l ' s own appeahigh er justice, embo died not in a con stitutio n but in natural and revealed law.'^ W hHoratian about Mar\ ell 's poem is i ts scrupulous awareness of what must be said on eside of the question. As in Horace's ode on the defeat of Cleopatra at Actium ( 'nunebi be nd um '), w here the celebration of a Ro ma n victory is qualified by a pane gyric ovan qui shed qu een , MarvelTs celebration of Cro mw ell is heavily qualified by his panegon the dead (Charles I:

He nothing common did, or mean,L pon the mem orable Scene :

Hut with his keener EyeThe Axes edge did try:

Nor call 'd the od s with vulgar spightT o \ indicate his helpless Rig ht,

Hut how 'd his conicl\ I leadDo wn , as upon a lied. ^

\ e t , th e p ta i s e o t (Charles is qua l i f ied in turn liN the sugge .st ion tha t h i s su bm issho we ve r d ign i f i ed and cou rag eo us , t o som e ex t en t v a l i da t ed t h e fo r ce t o wh ichs u b m i t t e d , f o r

'Lhis was that memorable Hour hich first assur'd the forced Pow'r.

Ma rs ell makes this 'm em ora ble Sce ne' crucial. Before it Cromw ell is prese nted chiefterms of power; afterwards he is praised for his justice, knowledge, moderation, ob ed ien ce: 'How fit he is to sway / T ha t can so well ob ey ' . But even this com me nd ati

qualified by the lines that lead up to it: 'Nor yet grown stiffer with Command, / But stthe Republick^s hand' . After such a tentative and conditional approval of Cromwell a dfacto head of state, the rema ind er of the ode limits i tself to anticipati ng his future victin foreign wars, an area in which approval need not be qualified. In the concluapostrophe, however, qual i f icat ion is implici t :

But thou the Wars and Fortunes SonMareh indefatigahly on,

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And for the last ef ectStiil keep thy Sword ereet:

Besides the foree it has to frightThe Spirits of die shady Night;

The same Arts that did gain

A Pinr^r must it

Power won by arts, lacking the endorsem ent of rights, can only be maintained by ceaselessand indefatigable e xertion. Ou r final view of Cromw ell put s him am ong those pu rsuers ofw orldly ambition derided in The Garden:

LIovv vainly men thcmsehcs amazeTo win the Palm, the Oke, or Hayes;And their uneessant Labours see row n'd from some single Herb or Tree,Whose short and narrow verged Shade

Does prudently their Toyles upbraid;Although the word liberal has now lost its meaning on both sides of the Atlantic and was

not a significant term in Marvell's time, I am inclined to attribute some of his greatstrength and abiding influence to a liberal imagination and a liberal conscience. Llis ode onCromwell always reminds me of E. M. Forster's Two C heers for Democracy His career aspoet and public servant was marked by independent judgement and a talent for makingresponsible discriminations. It is not surprising, then, that shortly after writing theHoratian Ode he took a position at Appleton Hou se with the L ord Gen eral Fairfax whohad retired from the leadership of the Parliamentary army because he disapproved ofCromwell's projected invasion of Scotland. In his sojourn with the L^iirfaxcs in Yorkshire,tutoring the girl w ho was so unfortunately to marry Dry den's Z iniri, the dissolute D uke ofBuckingham, Marvell probably wrote llie Garden and other poems on life in the countryin addition to a poem in Latin and two in English in honou r of his master. Upon App letonHouse is, among other th ings, a meditative or contem plative poem of ninety-seven four-square octasyllabic octet stanzas which explores the contending values of the retired lifeversus the active life. As I have mentioned, Marvell appears to have felt at its conclusionthat he had an obligation to emerge from retirement and serve his country. At the end of1652, with the help of M ilton, he applied for the post of assistant La tin Secretary . Insteadhe became governor of Cromwell's protege and prospective son-in-law, William Dutton.The awe and qualified admiration for Cromwell expressed in the Horatian Ode seemthrough this association to have deepened into an affection matched only by his warmrelationship to his nephew. Will Popple. Early in 1655 Marvell published The FirstAnniversary of the Government under Iis Highness The Lord Protector outstanding amongpoems on affairs of state for its special blend of political realism and piety. It explores theproposition that Cromwell may be a Heaven-sent ruler and that the power maintained soindefatigably at the end of the Horatian Ode might now, God willing, be endorsed byCromwell's coronation, a step which the Lord Protector refused to take. In any event


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Mai\ell s wisdom in lhe ways of innocence and experience appears brilliantly in hisliguiiUne representation olthe ways in which the political opposition may help to sustainthe Prolectorate. He sees in Cromwell another Amphion, using his instrument (theInstrument of Government, 1̂ )53, which established the Protectorate) to produce politicalharnioi i ) :

Such was that wondrous O rder and Consent,When Cniniwcll \un\\ the ruling Instrum ent;

The response is t r uh sub l ime :

None to be sunk in the Foundation bends.Each in the House the highest Plaee conten ds.And each the Hand that lays him will direct,y Vnd som e fall back upon the A rchitect;Yet all composed b\ his attractive Song,Into the Animated City throng.

The ti iagic of this leads to the engineer ing genius which underl ies M arvelPs magnificeand accurate representat ion of the dynamics of the mixed s ta te :

The (.oninion-wcalth docs through their C.enters allDraw the Circumf renec of the publiquc Wall;The erossest Spirits here do take their part,Fast ning the Contignation which they th wa rt;And they, whose Nature leads them to divide.Uphold, this one, and that the other S ide;Hut the most Lquali still sustcin the Height,And they as Pillars ki-cp the Work uprigh t;

While the resistance of opposed Mind s,1 he l \ibriL|uc as with Arches stronger hinds,Whieh on the Hasis t)f a Senate free.Knit by the Roofs Protecting weight agree.

T h i s has the bril l iance and precision of The D efinition of Love ith the addi t ion of gravityThe Pro tec tora te , as Marvel l contem plates it, can employ the least erected and mosthostile spirits in creat ing something as close to the heavenly city as can be found on ear th

J H. ke l l iher, AnJrcir .Muriel : Poet 5 Politniuii 4 j . B, Le i shman , The Art of Marve/Ts Poetry/62/-7.S (Lon don, 1978), (Lon don, 1966), pp. 68-70.

2 Andreir Marvelt. Complete Poetry ̂ ed. G. de F. 5 J. M. Wallace, Destiny his Choice: the Loyattsm ofLord (New York, 1968), and for all quo tation s .JH^/rt O Ali/Mv//(Cam bridge, 1968), p. 76.below.

^ I am indebted to my fr iend Robert New man forreminding me of Hem ingw ay s allusion.

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