Andrew Marvell's 'The Garden': "A Green Thought In a Green Shade"

Garden of Eden, Jan Brueghel the Elder, 1621.


It is finally the time of year for flowers, parks and gardens. I tend to be a little homesick in the spring, given that I originally come from Victoria, BC, a "City of Gardens" which actually is one - its gardens are more English than most of those I've seen in England. But now that the weather is getting warmer and the evenings are light, I have gone for a few wandering walks around Chelsea and Mayfair and enjoyed the blossoming cherry and magnolia trees.


THE GARDEN (Andrew Marvell)


'The Garden', by the great 17th century Metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell, still strikes me as one of the greatest poems I have ever read. I don't intend to analyze it in any depth here, but it is technically perfect, with so many unforgettable lines - "Annihilating all that's made/To a green thought in a green shade" - and with its Biblical, scientific, mythological and other references, it is like wandering through an introspective mind which also has an open, sensuous, witty curiosity. Marvell would probably have been very entertaining company.

A highly influential poem, 'The Garden' also inspired one of my favourite poems, by the West Coast Canadian poet Phyllis Webb - one of Canada's finest poets, and one of the finest from any country that you have probably never heard of. 'Marvell's Garden' is a beautiful poem about intellectual and emotional curiosity and isolation. It too has lines that I find unforgettable.


Oh, I have wept for some new convulsion
to tear together this world and his.

But then I saw his luminous plumèd Wings
prepared for flight,
and then I heard him singing glory
in a green tree,
and then I caught the vest he'd laid aside
all blest with fire.

(from 'Marvell's Garden', Phyllis Webb)

John Milton - 'On His Blindness'

ON HIS BLINDNESS (John Milton)


When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide,
"Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies: "God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts: who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait."


John Milton is best known for Paradise Lost, but this poem is also well known and is certainly my favourite of his works - possibly one of my favourite poems by anyone.

Milton, a poet of the 17th century, found himself completely blind by his late forties; and from the evidence of this poem, sadly frustrated, as this impairment left him very limited. He had to dictate his writing to assistants, one of whom was the great metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell.

In this sonnet, Milton refers to Jesus' parable of the talents, found at Matthew 25:14-30. Milton obviously feared that he was becoming like the servant who deliberately hid his talent, rather than using it and making it grow. While the talents in this parable were actually monetary units, and could represent various gifts, opportunities or useful abilities, many artists and interpreters have seen them literally as "talents."

Milton, a devout man, obviously found himself in a difficult position. He didn't want to make excuses for himself, but he also saw that his blindness had left him severely limited. This poem also reminds me of the apostle Paul's comments on his friend Epaphroditus, who was "longing to see all of you and is depressed because you heard he had fallen sick." (Philippians 2:26). Epaphroditus evidently felt that he couldn't do all that he felt he should be doing, and that his weakness had left him somehow exposed.

'On His Blindness' offers the response: "They also serve who only stand and wait." Sometimes there is little else that we can do but hold on. It doesn't mean that we are worth any less, or that we are any less loved.

MacLeish's 'You, Andrew Marvell': The Fall of Vast Empires

YOU, ANDREW MARVELL (Archibald MacLeish)


The above link will take you through to 'You, Andrew Marvell' on the Poetry Foundation website, as well as other poems and biographical information about MacLeish.

I think that 'You, Andrew Marvell' - which I could probably rank amongst my favourite poems - was another random anthology-browsing discovery; not sure, though. I was a bit puzzled for years by the title, though I'd read Marvell by then. Marvell's 'The Garden' is definitely a favourite poem, and I would like to write about it another time.

Eventually I realised, or had it pointed out to me (probably the latter - I'm often quite slow on the uptake) that it was a reference to Marvell's 'To His Coy Mistress', the best pickup artist poem ever written by a long shot. The following lines from the Marvell poem are especially notable:


My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
[...] But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.


'To His Coy Mistress' is very funny, and very clever, and weirdly erotic; but it is also sobering. Whether or not you're after something more profound than the speaker, time is hurrying on.

'You, Andrew Marvell' is no kind of love poem - it is about the vast empires that Marvell alluded to, and their eventual fall and decay. The poem has a racing, incantatory energy which has sometimes been criticized as repetitive, but to me it makes the poem. I see the speaker on a beach, with a vision in his mind of night's shadow falling over the turning earth. But he sees more than nightfall; he sees empires being swept under. The places that he name-checks were once world powers, and now are entirely gone, or are only weak copies of their former glory.

And Baghdad darken and the bridge

Across the silent river gone

And through Arabia the edge

Of evening widen and steal on

And deepen on Palmyra's street

The wheel rut in the ruined stone

And Lebanon fade out and Crete

High through the clouds and overblown

MacLeish was American, and I picture the speaker on a beach in the Hamptons of Long Island, or perhaps Florida. The shadow has already passed over the westernmost parts of Europe; now it looms over the sea and advances toward the coast of America. What really makes this poem special, after all the forward momentum, is the deliberate breath drawn in the split last stanza:


Nor now the long light on the sea:

And here face downward in the sun
To feel how swift how secretly
The shadow of the night comes on...


Is it simply to draw breath? Is it fear, is it wonder?

I thought of this poem today partly because I hadn't read it for a while and I love it; but also, 2011 has surely been a year to reflect upon the fall of empires. There have been few years like it in my lifetime.

I took the above picture in Cairo in August/September 2010, at the gates of the Egyptian Museum. Only a few months later the country was flung into upheaval with the Egyptian Revolution - outside those very gates, and occasionally inside - and the growing impetus of the Arab Spring. Recently I saw a photo from 2010 of an African-Arab summit where the leaders of Yemen, Egypt, Libya and Tunisia all stood together in the front row. Now, all have fallen and one is dead.

Other "empires" have been shaken; Japan, one of the largest economies in the world, after an appalling disaster which killed tens of thousands; the financial powers, through economic crisis and protest movements. This has been a momentous year. What will 2012, now so close, bring?