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