In a he-said-she-said situation, it is likely that the truth falls somewhere in between the conflicting opinions. In Andrew Marvell’s metaphysical poem, “A Dialogue Between the Soul and the Body,” the Soul feels trapped inside the Body, and the...

Andrew Marvell wrote his poem “Upon Appleton House, to my Lord Fairfax,” while he was serving as a tutor to the daughter of Lord Fairfax and living in his home, Nun Appleton Hall. The poem was written specifically for Lord Fairfax. In historical...

For both "The Mower Against Gardens" and "The Garden", the primary terms in opposition are the same: the world of nature, the world of men. The former is a realm of leisure, the latter of ceaseless, pointless toil. And yet the status granted to...

Jordan Reid Berkow

Personal Response

Lambert

December 14, 1998

The Love Poems of Rich, Marvell and Campion: Realism vs. Idealization

Adrienne Rich's "Twenty-One Love Poems," which explore the nature of lesbian love, differ strikingly from classic love...

Many poets draw on the theme of nature to symbolize the message they are trying to convey. In many cases, nature is juxtaposed with artistic design to emphasize the conflict or the relationship between the natural and the human worlds. Millar...

In Octavio Paz's book The Double Flame, he describes three different categories of love that can arise between partners: sexuality, eroticism, and Love. The first category, sexuality, refers to the biological and instinctive urge to reproduce,...

To His Coy Virgins

The concept of carpe diem or “seize the day” is a popular poetic credo. Seventeenth century poets Andrew Marvell and Robert Herrick address carpe diem by admonishing young virgins against coyness and procrastination. Despite...

Andrew Marvell’s poetry exemplifies an ancient literary genre known as the pastoral. This genre, which dates back to the third century B.C.E., represents the values of the shepherd and rustic life. Marvell’s poems “The Garden” and “The Nymph...

Dialectical structure is probably one of the major characteristics of all Metaphysical poetry. Donne was the pioneer of this type of poetry, which was marked by erudite scholarship, and difficulty of thought. It is said that a whole book of...

Andrew Marvell’s Mower Against the Garden is the first in a series of four ‘Garden’ poems. The poem can be read literally, as a pastoral, ecological poem concerned with the destruction of the natural landscape as a result of human consumerism; in...

Christopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” and Andrew Marvell’s “To his Coy Mistress” offer powerful examples of sensual, carpe diem Renaissance poetry. In both poems, the poet-speakers attempt to spur their beloveds into action...

Marvell's “To His Coy Mistress” was written when Cromwell’s Calvinism constrained liberty and free-will, and the poem exemplifies an unconventional assertion of love and sexual propositioning, while validating the request to yield in sexual...

H.C. Beeching proclaimed about ‘The Garden’ that ‘Marvell is the laureate of grass, and of greenery’. This is recognition of Marvell’s desire to explore, effectively, the relationship between man and creation through the analogy of a Garden....

The Journal of English Literary History indicates that ‘‘The picture of little T.C. in a prospect of Flowers’ is characteristic of Marvell’s poetry both in its complexity and in its subtle use of superficially ‘romantic’ or decorative detail’....

'Annihilating all that's made/To a green thought in green shade.' -Marvell

'I am re-begot/of absence, darknesse, death; things which are not.' -Donne

'Nothing,' as a concept has plasticity; it can be used in a number of different ways and refer...

Andrew Marvell’s “Upon Appleton House” and Ben Jonson’s “To Penshurst” share similarities characteristic of the English “Country House” poem, but they also contain notable differences from each other. Both “To Penshurst” and “Upon Appleton House”...

The intention of Andrew Marvell as to publication and public reception was often interfered with by the necessity of his political circumstances, particularly after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. This interference does however...

A number of Marvell’s poetry often centers around the soul and its qualities, notably in ‘A Dialogue, between the Resolved Soul and Created Pleasure’ and ‘On a Drop of Dew’. There is significant highlight of the soul’s spiritual and nature, along...

The art of poetic depiction of daily actions and familiar objects has become one of the most unique, especially with the development of such technique as defamiliarization. This stylistic technique has become popular due to its ability to depict...

Both Alain De Botton’s The Art of Travel and Andrew Marvell’s poem ‘The Garden’ successfully represent the many layers of influence on an individuals response to a landscape. They particularly reflect this through the influence of the individuals...

Hardy’s ‘Beyond the Last Lamp’ presents the theme of love and time in a subtler way than Marvell’s poem, as we only realize the retrospective nature of the poem at the fourth stanza, and see that his memory of the couple’s difficulty has stayed...