ENG LYRIC POETRY.pdf - STIBA Malang

ANDREW MARVELL
underlining Milton’s longstanding iconophobic prejudices. But it is also to note,
too, that identifying Milton with “Majesty” is a matter for a fifth, not a first,
paragraph. It is not a claim automatically asserted at the outset, nor is it
enunciated as part of a proclamation for all time, in the manner of Jonson’s
celebration of Shakespeare. It is, rather, a position arrived at through internal
deliberation or dialogue. It is the logical outcome of thinking about Milton’s
inimitability, a point earned, in this respect, by both the poet of Paradise Lost
and by the thinking, writing subject. Yet Marvell’s emphasis on individual
evaluation is finally not exclusively rationalistic in its criteria: Milton’s
“Majesty…Draws the Devout, deterring the Profane.”
In putting his signature, or more exactly, his initials at the bottom of his
response to Milton’s poem, Marvell allows his own readers a rare opportunity to
consider the distance he has travelled as a reader since the time his first and only
other signed commendatory poem appeared in print: “To his Noble Friend Mr.
Richard Lovelace, upon his Poems.” The difference between the two poems in
the same genre is almost as conspicuous as the difference between the two poets
commemorated. In the earlier poem, Lovelace is “read” not as one Cavalier
might read another but as the author of Areopagitica might read Lovelace, or
rather not so much read him (for not a single poem is mentioned, and not a
single stylistic trait celebrated), as defend the right to read him in the current
post-Civil War climate of renewed suspicion and censorship. Lovelace might
even be seen to represent an interesting though challenging test case for an
“Areopagitican” Marvell, since Lovelace’s devotion to the royalist cause was
indisputable. That challenge may help to explain the most curious moment in
the poem—the sudden arrival at the end of a bevy of women, naturally
Lovelace’s most ardent supporters—who have “Sally’d” forth to question the
sincerity of the commendatory poet’s intentions.
They all in mutiny though yet undrest
Sally’d, and would in his defence contest.
And one the loveliest that was yet e’re seen,
Thinking that I too of the rout had been,
Mine eyes invaded with a female spight,
(She knew what pain ’twould be to lose that sight.)
This fanciful event then allows Marvell the opportunity to state, unequivocally,
not his party allegiance as the lines might first suggest, but the truth of
Lovelace’s “cause,” the right of Lucasta to appear in print at all:
O no, mistake not, I reply’d, for I
In your defence, or in his cause would dy.
But he secure of glory and of time
Above their envy, or mine aid doth clime.
285