1. Composed for the Choir and Orchestra of Leighton Park School, The Bermudas was written for small orchestra. There is a reduction for piano (four hands), authorized by the composer.

2. The idea of the poem was probably suggested by conversations between Marvell and the Revd John Oxenbridge, in whose house the poet lived for a time at Eton. Oxenbridge, persecuted by Archbishop Laud, had embarked for the Bermudas in 1635.

3. Marvell had a fondness for the colour green – see V. Sackville-West’s Andrew Marvell (1929): ‘but of all colours it was green that enchanted him most; the world of his mind was a glaucous world, as though he lived in a coppice, stippled with sunlight and alive with moving shadows.’

4. Hormuz, on the Persian Gulf.

5. pineapples.

6. a substance with a fragrant musky odour excreted by the sperm whale.