He was of middling stature, pretty strong sett, roundish faced, cherry cheek’t, hazell eie, browne haire. He was in his conversation very modest, and of very few words: and though he loved wine he would never drinke hard in company, and was wont to say that, he would not play the good-fellow in any man’s company in whose hands he would not trust his life. He had not a generall acquaintance. […] He kept bottles of wine at his lodgeing, and many times he would drinke liberally by himselfe to refresh his spirits, and exalt his Muse. (I remember I have been told that the learned Goclenius (an High-German) was wont to keep bottells of good Rhenish-wine in his studie, and, when his spirits wasted, he would drinke a good Rummer of it.)
JOHN AUBREY: Brief Lives (c.1693)
The son of a clergyman, Marvell was educated at Hull Grammar School and Trinity College, Cambridge – he was awarded a BA in 1638/9 but left in 1641 without a higher degree. At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642, he declined to commit fully to either side, and spent several years travelling on the continent. Although he entertained Royalist sympathies, he wrote ‘An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland’, and was soon tutoring the daughter of the recently retired Parliamentary general Lord Fairfax at the latter’s house in Nun Appleton, Yorkshire, where he wrote several of his poems. Milton recommended him for the post of Assistant Latin Secretary to the government in 1653, which he assumed in 1657, by which time he had been appointed tutor to one of Cromwell’s wards. His poem on ‘The First Anniversary of the Government under Oliver Cromwell’ showed where his political sympathies now lay. He was elected to Parliament as a member for Hull (Aubrey wrote that ‘his native towne of Hull loved him so well that they elected him for their representative in Parliament, and gave him an honourable pension to maintaine him’) and spoke frequently in the House in favour of religious toleration.
As a writer, Marvell resists classification. According to Aubrey, Rochester called Marvell ‘the only man in England that had the true veine of Satyre’ – he wrote a number of witty satires, the best of which, ‘Last Instructions to a Painter’ (1667), reveals the extent of financial and sexual corruption at court and in Parliament; and several of his works in prose speak out against intolerance (The Second Part of the Rehearsall Transpros’d, 1673, Mr. Smirke: or, The Divine in Mode, 1676, and An Account of the Growth of Popery, and Arbitrary Government, 1677). His poetry has been described, unhelpfully, as Metaphysical, Mannerist and Puritan. He is, perhaps, at his idiosyncratic best when describing nature, as in ‘Bermudas’, ‘The Mower against Gardens’, ‘The Mower to the Glow-Worms’ and ‘The Garden’. Most of his poems were published in folio as Miscellaneous Poems, three years after his death. Until the beginning of the nineteenth century he was remembered chiefly as a writer who spoke out against political and religious intolerance; his reputation as a lyric poet increased during the nineteenth century, and he is now regarded as one of the most original poets in the English language.
Ye living Lamps, by whose dear light
The Nightingale does sit so late,
And studying all the Summer-night,
Her matchless Songs does meditate;
Ye Country Comets, that portend
No War, nor Prince’s funeral,
Shining unto no higher end
Then to presage the Grasses fall;
Ye Glo-worms, whose officious Flame
To wandring Mowers shows the way,
That in the Night have lost their aim,
And after foolish Fires do stray;
Your courteous Lights in vain you wast,
Since Juliana here is come,
For She my Mind hath so displac’d
That I shall never find my home.
Where the remote Bermudas ride2
In th’Oceans bosome unespy’d,
From a small Boat, that row’d along,
The listning Winds receiv’d this Song.
What should we do but sing his Praise
That led us through the watry Maze,
Unto an Isle so long unknown,
And yet far kinder than our own?
Where he the huge Sea-Monsters wracks,
That lift the Deep upon their Backs.
He lands us on a grassy Stage;
Safe from the Storms, and Prelat’s rage.
He gave us this eternal Spring,
Which here enamells every thing;
And sends the Fowl’s to us in care,
On daily Visits through the Air.
He hangs in shades the Orange bright,
Like golden Lamps in a green3 Night.
And does in the Pomgranates close,
Jewels more rich than Ormus4 show’s.
He makes the Figs our mouths to meet;
And throws the Melons at our feet.
But Apples5 plants of such a price,
No Tree could ever bear them twice.
With Cedars, chosen by his hand,
From Lebanon, he stores the Land.
And makes the hollow Seas, that roar,
Proclaime the Ambergris6 on shoar.
He cast (of which we rather boast)
The Gospels Pearl upon our Coast.
And in these Rocks for us did frame
A Temple, where to sound his Name.
Oh let our Voice his Praise exalt,
Till it arrive at Heavens Vault:
Which thence (perhaps) rebounding, may,
Eccho beyond the Mexique Bay.
Thus sung they, in the English boat,
An holy and a chearful Note,
And all the way, to guide their Chime,
With falling Oars they kept the time.
To make a final conquest of all me,
Love did compose so sweet an Enemy,
In whom both Beauties to my death agree,
Joyning themselves in fatal Harmony;
That while she with her Eyes my Heart does bind,
She with her Voice might captivate my Mind.
I could have fled from One but singly fair:
My dis-intangled Soul it self might save,
Breaking the curled trammels of her hair.
But how should I avoid to be her Slave,
Whose subtile Art invisibly can wreath
My Fetters of the very Air I breath?
It had been easy fighting in some plain,
Where Victory might hang in equal choice.
But all resistance against her is vain,
Who has th’advantage both of Eyes and Voice.
And all my Forces needs must be undone,
She having gained both the Wind and Sun.