ENG LYRIC POETRY.pdf - STIBA Malang

ANDREW MARVELL
begin this war and be on the offensive part, or only stand upon our own defense
is that which I scruple.” The remark was made in Whitehall on June 24, 1650,
with Cromwell present, and when pressed further about his involvement, Fairfax
added (in a now more Miltonic register), “I am to answer only for my own
conscience, and what that yields unto as just and lawful, I shall follow; and what
seems to me or what I doubt to be otherwise I must not do.” 26 Marvell tactfully
recorded this sentiment in the center of his poem, with an equally tactful
reminiscence from Milton’s Comus:
For he did, with his utmost Skill,
Ambition weed, but Conscience till.
Conscience, that Heaven-nursed Plant,
Which most our Earthly Gardens want.
A prickling leave it bears, and such
As that which shrinks at ev’ry touch;
But Flowrs eternal, and divine,
That in the Crowns of Saints do shine.
273
(stanza 45)
Milton had spoken of Haemony as “a small unsightly root/But of divine effect
…/The leafe was darkish, and had prickles on it,/But in another Country… /Bore
a bright golden flow’r.”
The circulation of compliments here points, I believe, to the wider issue
of how “Upon Appleton House” ought to be read. In recent years a good
deal of critical energy has been spent recovering historical information and
political attitudes that tend to lie just below the surface of the poem,
information that, in turn, helps to fill in gaps in our understanding: the
circumstances surrounding Fairfax’s retirement, his connection with
Winstanley and hostility toward the Levellers, the possibility in the 1650s
that Fairfax might return to active military service. Michael Wilding has
been especially helpful in this regard, but his frequently reiterated and
accurate conclusion about Marvell, that the poet often invites general
analogies but usually blocks specific decoding, also has the effect of
returning us, although with renewed appreciation, to the surface and to a
continuing truth about the poem: that “Upon Appleton House” is a virtuoso
performance in the recently established tradition of the country house
poem. 27 It is a lesson in delight and instruction by a tutor-poet whom, of all
things, Milton, the author of Comus, was shortly to recommend for a
position as his assistant in Cromwell’s government.
By delight and instruction, I mean something more than what is usually
expected in the seventeenth century: something more like delight in instruction,
as happens rather deliriously near the end of the poem, for instance, when
Marvell casts himself in the role of the “easie Philosopher”: