The Poems and Some Satires of Andrew Marvell

Andrew Marvell

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Andrew Marvell is a man of many faces, in both poetry and politics. A master of the pastoral dialogue, he can equally well fire out a Juvenalian satire; congratulate the new republic while also applauding the murdered king’s fortitude; and balance a solemn platitude against a ribald joke within the space of two lines. This constitutional habit of seeing two sides of the same issue owes much to Ben Jonson’s influence although the younger poet uses this talent to create irony like Donne’s rather than for the appearance of frank honesty as in Jonson. In “The Garden” he is as at home with sensory luxury as Herrick, but his paradoxes and metaphysical conceits, in “The Definition of Love,” rival Donne’s. One may suspect that the couplet form, especially in the satires, encourages this doubleness, for where the rhymes are muted it is not found, as in the straight pathos of the “The Nymph’s Complaining for the Death of Her Fawn,” enjambment obscuring rhymes by tending to make phrases end in the middle of lines rather than at line-end.

In the Satires, Marvell shifts from arch sneering to savage excoriation, and then to rollicking triple-rhythm burlesque. It seems at times that he must certainly be added to someone’s hit list, but his insults are so brazen and he appears to have so much fun in making scandalous accusations that he appears to enjoy the immunity of a court jester.

(Summary by Thomas A. Copeland)