ENG LYRIC POETRY.pdf - STIBA Malang

ANDREW MARVELL
sentimentalized in the seventeenth century, 21 Marvell was especially attuned
to the element of “bad faith” in this gesture. As the opening stanza suggests, in
its entangling wit, a posture that claims a complete renunciation of power
only deflects and re-creates the totalizing impulse in another form. The perfect
“garland of repose” imagined by the speaker “crowns” and “upbraids” all efforts
at civic accomplishment in the respective areas of war, statesmanship, and
poetry:
How vainly men themselves amaze
To win the Palm, the Oke, or Bayes;
And their uncessant Labours see
Crown’d from some single Herb or Tree.
Whose short and narrow verged Shade
Does prudently their Toyles upbraid;
While all Flow’rs and all Trees do close
To weave the Garlands of repose.
Marvell, of course, is the maker, not the victim of the maze. By taking the idea
of pastoral—“vegetable Love”—excessively straight, he ensures that we see its
eccentricities:
No white nor red was ever seen
So am’rous as this lovely green.
Fond Lovers, cruel as their Flame,
Cut in these Trees their Mistress name.
Little, Alas, they know, or heed,
How far these Beauties Hers exceed!
Fair Trees! wheres’e’er your barkes I wound,
No Name shall but your own be found.
And he ensures that we understand, too, how eccentricities are perhaps not
always quite innocent, as in the much disputed central stanza, although it is also
extremely difficult to know precisely where to draw the line between excessive
pleasures and “fallen” behavior:
What wond’rous Life in this I lead!
Ripe Apples drop about my head;
The Luscious Clusters of the Vine
Upon my Mouth do crush their Wine;
The Nectaren, and curious Peach,
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on Melons, as I pass,
Insnar’d with Flow’rs, I fall on Grass.
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