The Complete Poems

by Andrew Marvell, Jonathan Bate (Introduction), Elizabeth Story Donno (Editor)

Member of Parliament, tutor to Oliver Cromwell’s ward, satirist, and friend of John Milton, Andrew Marvell was one of the most significant poets of the seventeenth century. The Complete Poems demonstrates his unique skill and immense diversity, and includes lyrical love poetry, religious works, and biting satire. From the passionately erotic “To His Coy Mistress” to the astutely political Cromwellian poems and the profoundly spiritual “On a Drop of Dew,” in which he considers the nature of the soul, these works are masterpieces of clarity and metaphysical imagery.

This Penguin Classics edition includes authoritative texts of these poems, based on a detailed study of the extant mansucripts, and a new introduction by leading scholar Jonathan Bate. Also included are a chronology, further reading selections, appendices, notes, and indexes. 

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Fiction, British Literature, 17th Century, Literature, Renaissance

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1872

About the author

Frequently satirical work of English metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell includes "To His Coy Mistress" and "The Definition of Love," both published posthumously.

A clergyman fathered Andrew Marvell, a parliamentarian. John Donne and George Herbert associated him. He befriended John Milton, a colleague.

The family moved to Hull, where people appointed his father as lecturer at church of Holy Trinity, and where grammar school educated the young Marvell. A secondary school in the city is now named after him.

He most famously composed The Garden , An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland , and the Country House Poem , Upon Appleton House .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_...

Reviews

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Marvell is a marvell. I spent several years of my life on this book, and of course his delightful prose satires mostly of clerics, such as his Rehearsal Transpros'd, and I have never regretted a minute of it. The book I wrote on him, This Critical Age: Deliberate Departures from Literary Conventions in Seventeenth Century English Poetry, was published by the U MI doctorate mill. It's been in one German library, at the University where Pope Benedict XVI once taught and administered. I cannot claim he ordered it, but...Just last year, 35 years later in 2017, another German library, Frein Universitadt Berlin, added it.

Directing my thesis was the delightful Leonard Unger (U MN), who with his friend Saul Bellow once composed, over lunch, a translation of the first four lines of Eliot's Wasteland--into Yiddish. Leonard had an expansive mind, and broadened my studies of Marvell into comparative European literature-- since Marvell tutored languages to Lord General Fairfax's daughter. They lived near Hull at Appleton House, after Fairfax retired as head of Cromwell's army at age 33, because of his refusal to participate in the trial of Charles I; when Fairfax's name was read in Westminster Hall, a voice called out, "He has too much sense to be here." This caused a mini-riot; it was his wife's voice, Anne Vere's. The following day, someone tried the same thing, and was branded.

In his "Garden," Marvell writes perhaps the best lines in all lit on the human mind, especially in the midst of nature, "The Mind, that Ocean where each kind/ Does streight its own resemblance find,/ Yet it creates, transcending these,/ Far other Worlds, and other Seas,/ Annihilating all that's made/ To a green Thought, in a green Shade." His environmentalist lines in the same poem criticize Fond lovers' carving names in trees. "Fair trees! where s'eer your barkes I wound/ No names shall but your own be found." He puts this into practice in his Latin version of the same poem, "Hortus." He says he will carve "nullla Naera, or Chloe, but Plane tree and Elm, Plantanus ...Ulmus.
Marvell had a marvelous ear, so that even in his funny prose satirizing the bishops (whom, like Milton, he generally opposed) he writes with amusing alliteration, on Archbishop Parker's sexual peccadilloes, "The sympathy of silk brought tippet to petticoat, and petticoat to tippet."

Here's Marvell's translation from Seneca's Thyestes, the chorus just before Thyestes enters from exile:

Climb at Court for me that will
Tottering favors Pinacle;
All I seek is to lie still.
Settled in some secret Nest
In calm Leisure let me rest.
And far off the publick Stage
Pass away my silent Age.
Thus when without noise, unknown
I have liv'd out all my span,
I shall die, without a groan,
An old honest Country man.
Who expos'd to others Ey's,
Into his own Heart ne'r pry's,
Death to him's a Strange surprise.

My study emphasizes that all of Marvell's poems are criticism of other poems, in verse. Many of them critique the pastoral convention then so prevalent, like "Picture of Little T.C. in a Prospect of Flowers," and "The Garden." His most famous poem, "To his Coy Mistress," unprecedented and unreiterated in his canon, critiques Carpe Diem poems*, including many sonnets. (Shakespeare's "My Mistress' Eyes" also critiques sonnet conventions, as do a a few of Sidney's sonnets.) In fact, English poets until Dryden usually included criticism of other poems--Donne, Jonson, Herbert, Herrick, Carew, Suckling, Cleveland. After Dryden, criticism became a prose landscape. Too bad. With this loss, poetry became famously non-analytical. But why? Many Renaissance poems discourse on natural philosophy, what we call "science." Cowley in English, Giordano Bruno in Latin. (My last two books are on G Bruno.)

* So few love & sex poems in his opus, possibly for clear reason, if he was a eunuch: he has a Latin poem On a poet, a eunuch.

[Ulysse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Random Thoughts on Andrew Marvell

I’ve often wondered what people like Andrew Marvell had for breakfast in 1645.
Was Andrew more of a sausage or a bacon guy?
Did he sleep regular hours?
Did he have any hobbies like collecting stamps or flying a kite?
Did he wear the same suit of clothes all year round except on Sundays?
How often did he wash?
Did he smell funny?
Was he preoccupied with the colour of his teeth?
Did he worry about developing love handles?
Did he do a hundred push-ups every morning?
Was he a nail-biter?
Did he go for jogs along the Thames?
Did he sonnet like people text nowadays?
Did he sexnet like people sext nowadays?
Did Andrew Marvell ever go on a blind date?
Did he ever take a girl to a cockfight?
Did he enjoy candlelight dinners?
Did he have a green thumb?
Was his relationship with roses healthy?
Did he write poems for a living or did he live to write poems?
What colour of ink did he prefer?
Did he ever use his goose quill to tickle the maid?
What did he really want from life?
Did he feel old at thirty-five?
Did sunsets make him sentimental?
Did he ever taste a banana?
Did he gaze at his own reflection in the mirror and find himself handsome?
Did he have a secret crush on a Greek god?
Did he envy Milton?
Did he rail at the stars?
Did Cromwell sometimes get on his nerves?
How many words a minute could he write?
What would he have Tweeted?
Was he afraid of dying?
Was he happy?
Did he love his mother?
Would I have been his friend?


*For answers to these questions see Message 5 below

[nicholas · Rating 5 out of 5]

love marvell. disclaimer: i only read a 'selection', the incomplete poems if you will

favourite poems include coy mistress (for the wit), the coronet, the definition of love, unfortunate lover, and the gallery. the latter 4 are for their profundity / insight and the beauty of some images and lines; if i had to choose, my absolute favourite is the closing stanza of the gallery - i think it sums up the knowing cleverness yet earnestness and pure sincerity of feeling in his poetry that i really enjoy

[Noelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

much better than Astrophil and Stella. I particularly appreciated the range of concepts that Marvell's poems spanned - from the pastoral to carpe diem / memento mori to religious devotion - it displays his versatility as a poet. I would probably have enjoyed it a lot more had it not been an examination text. Nevertheless I highly admire Marvell's adroit use of metaphysical conceits and Neoplatonic ideas. My personal favourite would probably be Dialogue between the Resolved Soul and Created Pleasure / Eyes and Tears, but the Definition of Love is a close second.

[C. B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I adored the first half of these poems. They concern contemplation, love, sex, and social order. Marvell has his poetic preoccupations, and I became particularly fond of his interest in eyes and tears. There are also brilliantly vivid depictions of landscape and plant life. 'Damon the Mower' gives a beautiful view of dry summer; 'The Garden', green moisture. These poems have underlying political metaphors, but one can tune in or out of these as one wishes. In the second half of the poems, politics is unavoidable. I'm interested in these historically, but they're not really something I'd read for pleasure. But I give this 5 stars for 'The Garden' alone. I'm now utterly obsessed with green Thoughts in green Shades.

[Richard Lodge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marvell is so poised, so witty, so complete. He uses conceits, for sure, but with emotional control too, so the curious images never seem forced or unnatural. He has style: bounce, flow, energy, elan. All of this is driven by the force of feeling. He hits home.

[Arcee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

[Francisca · Rating 3 out of 5]

from the three metaphysical poets i've read so far (John Donne, George Herbert and Andrew Marvell), this has been my--not quite favourite but most preferred. does it have to do with the amount (in this case lack) of religious/secular poetry? most likely.

here's my favourite poem:

music's empire

First was the world as one great cymbal made,
Where jarring winds to infant Nature played.
All music was a solitary sound,
To hollow rocks and murm'ring fountains bound.

Jubal first made the wilder notes agree;
And Jubal tuned music's Jubilee;
He call'd the echoes from their sullen cell,
And built the organ's city where they dwell.

Each sought a consort in that lovely place,
And virgin trebles wed the manly bass.
From whence the progeny of numbers new
Into harmonious colonies withdrew.

Some to the lute, some to the viol went,
And others chose the cornet eloquent,
These practicing the wind, and those the wire,
To sing men's triumphs, or in Heaven's choir.

Then music, the mosaic of the air,
Did of all these a solemn noise prepare;
With which she gain'd the empire of the ear,
Including all between the earth and sphere.

Victorious sounds! yet here your homage do
Unto a gentler conqueror than you;
Who though he flies the music of his praise,
Would with you Heaven's Hallelujahs raise.

[Daniel Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very thin volume for a 'complete works' type book. I suppose this is what makes Marvell so remarkable, that he was such an accomplished poet with so little apparent effort. And accomplished he is, writing variously in every tone, form and genre of lyric poem he knew about, while having his own distinct voice. This book is truly (ahem) marvellous.

[Rachel]

I love the poem Eyes and Tears (14 stanzas) among others
1
How wisely Nature did decree,
With the same eyes to weep and see!
That, having viewed the object vain,
We might be ready to complain.....

[Brandon Clarke · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an amazing poet. Metaphysical poetry has always fascinated me. Marvell's "On a Drop of Dew" still rings to mind to this day. I think it has become my daily mantra, and this particular passage is what resonates with me most:

" So the soul, that drop, that ray
Of the clear fountain of eternal day,
Could it within the human flow’r be seen,
Remembering still its former height,
Shuns the sweet leaves and blossoms green,
And recollecting its own light,
Does, in its pure and circling thoughts, express
The greater heaven in an heaven less.
In how coy a figure wound,
Every way it turns away:
So the world excluding round,
Yet receiving in the day,
Dark beneath, but bright above,
Here disdaining, there in love. "

I have yet to delve into John Donne and, from what I read about him, it is quite something else.

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading through Marvell's complete poems is a bit like taking a chronological tour through a "long 17th century" of English verse, starting with a few exercises in sub-Sidneyan pastoral, and ending with long satires in heroic couplets, in the manner of Dryden or Pope. In between, there are hints of Donne and Herbert, Herrick and Lovelace; and of course there is Marvell's friendship with Milton, although this does not show up much in the poems themselves. Marvell's poetic journey also reflects his success in keeping his head above the turbulent political waters of his age, from the Personal Rule of Charles I, though the Civil War, Commonwealth and Protectorate, and ending in the Restoration period.

This very range means that it can be a challenge to really enjoy Marvell's poetry as a whole. Fortunately, there are plenty of good or even great individual poems. Some of them are well-known and deservedly so: "To His Coy Mistress", of course, but also "The Coronet", "Upon Appleton House", the Mower poems, and "The Garden", for example. I was already familar with most of these, and enjoyed reading them again. The rest of the lyrical poems are a mixed bunch, and not especially memorable (with the unfortunate exception, perhaps, of the decidedly creepy "Young Love"). The occasional poems, odes and satires, are more difficult to appreciate at a distance from the time and circumstances of their composition. I found "Flecknoe" and "Tom May's Death" surprisingly entertaining, but the long and densely topical "The Last Instructions to a Painter" was hard work. Running through all of Marvell's poetry once was instructive, but I suspect that I will only be returning to the anthology pieces in future.

[Prisoner 071053 · Rating 3 out of 5]

The non-stop rhymed couplets were a bit clangy and distracting, especially after spending so long reading Blake's long, unrhymed lines. At least English prosody hadn't reached the dullness, in Marvell's day, that was the age of Pope and Dryden. The pseudo-pastoral stuff wasn't all that interesting, but Marvell is good in his descriptions of nature. I was surprised to find the best of his poems to be a long piece about his friend's house in the country. I almost didn't even read that poem since it was mis-categorized by the editor with the political satires, which dreary things I barely gave a few minutes of attention before closing the book.

Marvell isn't the kind of poet one revisits, but it's good finally to have read more than "To His Coy Mistress."

[Katherine Simmons · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read Marvell's work on and off for a while so brought this book based off experience, however I didn't realise the differing styles of poetry. Personally I liked his vague descriptions of his love(s) and his gentle style, I have impression of soneone who is protecting the object of his desire.

His Cromwell work which I hadn't read before is fascinating view into that time and class.

One of the lowest scores for this is from someone who had to study his work for a course, so I feel that that isn't a fair score.

[Noreen Auterio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Had we but world enough, and time...

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marvell's body of work epitomizes the Cavalier poets, and his love poems are some of the best ever written.

[Ben Truong · Rating 4 out of 5]

Andrew Marvell: The Complete Poems is an anthology of all of Marvell's poems, edited by Elizabeth Story Donno with an introduction written by Jonathan Bate. Marvell’s work demonstrates his unique skill and immense diversity to the full, and includes lyrical love-poetry, religious works and biting satire.

Andrew Marvell was an English metaphysical poet, satirist and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1659 and 1678. During the Commonwealth period he was a colleague and friend of John Milton. His poems range from the love-song to evocations of an aristocratic country house and garden, the political address, and the later personal and political satires.

For the most part, this collection of poems was written rather well and gives an impression of the life and times that Andrew Marvell lived in. Andrew Marvell: The Complete Poems contains the complete works of Andrew Marvell, who is, to use the pun, a marvelous poet. His poems are roughly divided into his lyrical poems, The Cromwell era, The Charles II era, poets and heroes, and his Latin poems. Additionally, there are three appendixes that round out the collection.

Like most anthologies there are weaker contributions and Andrew Marvell: The Complete Poems is not an exception. While there are poems better written over others – they are all rather written beautifully and the few are typically his earlier works or far and few in-between.

All in all, Andrew Marvell: The Complete Poems is a wonderful collection if not the definitive collection of the works of Andrew Marvell.

[Keerthi Vasishta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely brilliant. I'm officially a seventeenth century enthusiast between Marvell and Milton now. Some of this stuff is hilarious and that's with me barely knowing the context. And the thing is, when Marvell wants to write seriously, he's perfectly capable as well! Totally worth reading if you enjoy older poetry. Some of the romantic stuff is a bit pathetic in the modern world, archiac and sexism casually flow, but it's an archaic poet, literally.
He likes 'Eliza', who he praises as the symbol of the golden age (someone took Henry VIII by Billy S very seriously)and takes plenty of digs at royalty and even Cromwell (who he admired) to compensate.
'Last Instructions to a Painter' is tragic, funny and informative all at once, as is 'The Loyal Scot'. His poem on Milton's Paradise Lost is heartfel and honest, while the poem to Doctor Witty's translation errors in 'Primrose' is downright hilarious: 'Alas, by Anticyras, what herbs can cure/This fierce plague of writing[...]'.
And so it goes to the'Time winged chariots of eternity', which obviously is so much less profound than it sounds...

[Zee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really interesting read.

When someone says "Renaissance poetry" to me, I normally think of shallow romantic tropes and really creepy dudes who think it's hot when a woman tells them no. I like Renaissance poetry, don't get me wrong, it's just problematic abd best taken in small doses. And then there's Marvell.

You know, he's not Shakespeare. Or Sydney. Or Marlowe. Instead of romantic sonnets, this dude was over here hanging out, writing poetry about Renaissance politricks (no that's not a typo), and not publishing a single thing. His works came out almost 100 years after what he wrote, but they're literally a Shakesperean Divine Comedy in terms of political commentary. It's absolutely fascinating. My history wasn't quite up to par so I couldn't fully unpack most of it, but oooohh these were some shade-throwing poems

[James Violand · Rating 3 out of 5]

Marvell was a talented sycophant and is a very dated poet. He praised Charles I, then Cromwell, then Charles II. Consequently, he is welded to his time. If the reader knows no mid-seventeenth century English history, he will reject this read after a few dozen pages. This is not meant to disparage Marvell. If you were alive during the three English-Dutch Wars and wondered how the navy had become so inept, Marvell disclosed the corruption in rhyme and skewered the politicians of the day. Had he emphasized his pastoral favoritism, he may have become more renowned today, but would have been irrelevant for the times in which he lived.

[Zander Bautz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Masterpiece poetry in here. “The fair singer” might be my favorite ever. I could have skipped all of the long-ass, outdated political poems, but I didn’t. Because I am a good boy.

“Whose subtle art invisibly can wreathe/ my fetters of the very air I breathe”

[JT · Rating 4 out of 5]

So short for a Complete Poems. But by goodness, so, so good.

[Charlotte · Rating 4 out of 5]

confession: i did not read the latin poems

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

[Isa · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Poli]

read: "To His Coy Mistress"

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Complete Poems by Andrew Marvell - You may be surprised to know that you recognize some of these. Happy Reading!

[Hannah Potantus · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am directly in the middle on this rating because I don’t know a lot about poetry. I didn’t like it but I didn’t hate it so here we are with an even 2.5 stars.

[Jodi Bhachu-Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

How can you not love a poet who proclaims to "stumble on melons"?

[En · Rating 3 out of 5]

that essay was quite mid (solitude???) but marvell is a fun text nonetheless!! or maybe not. idk my marvell was quite cooked near the end