simple Puritan pleasure versus ascetic purity of the pastoral-religious lyrics. From the sensual celebration of the fruits of the earth, Marvell passes not to renunciation or censoriousness. The movement is a transcendent one, to a mystical, disembodied rapture of pure contemplation that has left behind the poor world of mere sense:
Mean while the Mind, from pleasure less,
Withdraws into its happiness:
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 thatâs made
To a green Thought in a green Shade.
The seductive smoothness and rhythm of these lines draws the reader into a contemplation of Marvellâs garden-ecstasy, where all conscious intellectual activity and the world of actual sense melt into a Platonic idea of garden greenness, a sort of distilled essence of natural beauty, a âgreen Thought in a green Shadeâ. In his posthumous volume of Miscellaneous Poems Marvell uses the word âgreenâ an extraordinary number of times, the colour operating as a potent symbol of the contemplative mood. The exalted state Marvell reaches in the poem, where his âSoul into the boughs does glideâ like a bird, is compared with the Edenic state of unsexual bliss where pleasure was solitary: âTwo Paradises âtwere in one/To live in Paradise aloneâ. Marvell never married and wrote many poems celebrating love without sex and the innocence that precedes sexual knowledge.
Marvell did not stay longer than two years at Nun Appleton, assuming he arrived there some time after November 1650 when he wrote the poem on the death of Tom May, perhaps as late as the beginning of 1651. Early in 1653 he was seeking an official government post, although the post he actually attained during the summer was another tutorial one. Two poems during 1651 can be accurately dated, the first being âTo his worthy Friend Doctor Witty upon his Translation of the Popular Errorsâ. Witty was a Hull physician who translated a Latin treatise published in 1638 by another Hull doctor, James Primrose. Marvellâs poem, together with a Latin one on the same theme, appeared among some commendatory verses to the translation, which seem to have been published very early in 1651, so he was thus still in contact with Hull during his Fairfacian retreat. The poem is of interest chiefly for its insight into Marvellâs view of translation. He believed strongly that the translator should be servant of the text and not try to be clever at its expense. Too many translators âare Authors grownâ and, by adding matter unnecessarily, âmake the Book their ownâ, a charge that could still be levelled at some poetic translators today. Translators who muddy the waters of good prose by their prolix additions are worse than those who miss out things from the original: âHe is Translations thief that addeth more,â writes the poet.
The other poem was a Latin verse addressed to Oliver St John, who was chosen in February 1651 to undertake a mission to the United Provinces to negotiate an alliance with the Dutch. He reached the Hague on 17 March, but the mission was unsuccessful and he returned in June. The existence of the poem indicates that in Yorkshire Marvell was not isolated from the political world.
The hints of impatience with rural seclusion in the Fairfax poems make it unsurprising that Marvell was now looking for new employment. It is unlikely that the thirteen-year-old Mary had nothing more to learn in the field of foreign languages, but her tutor was getting restless. It was time to call in some favours. And Marvellâs first approach was to another poet, John Milton.
10
I Saw Him Dead
So have I seen a Vine, whose lasting Age
Of many a Winter hath survivâd the rage.
The death of Cromwell, under whose influence Marvell had flourished throughout the mid-1650s, was a
Mean while the Mind, from pleasure less,
Withdraws into its happiness:
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 thatâs made
To a green Thought in a green Shade.
The seductive smoothness and rhythm of these lines draws the reader into a contemplation of Marvellâs garden-ecstasy, where all conscious intellectual activity and the world of actual sense melt into a Platonic idea of garden greenness, a sort of distilled essence of natural beauty, a âgreen Thought in a green Shadeâ. In his posthumous volume of Miscellaneous Poems Marvell uses the word âgreenâ an extraordinary number of times, the colour operating as a potent symbol of the contemplative mood. The exalted state Marvell reaches in the poem, where his âSoul into the boughs does glideâ like a bird, is compared with the Edenic state of unsexual bliss where pleasure was solitary: âTwo Paradises âtwere in one/To live in Paradise aloneâ. Marvell never married and wrote many poems celebrating love without sex and the innocence that precedes sexual knowledge.
Marvell did not stay longer than two years at Nun Appleton, assuming he arrived there some time after November 1650 when he wrote the poem on the death of Tom May, perhaps as late as the beginning of 1651. Early in 1653 he was seeking an official government post, although the post he actually attained during the summer was another tutorial one. Two poems during 1651 can be accurately dated, the first being âTo his worthy Friend Doctor Witty upon his Translation of the Popular Errorsâ. Witty was a Hull physician who translated a Latin treatise published in 1638 by another Hull doctor, James Primrose. Marvellâs poem, together with a Latin one on the same theme, appeared among some commendatory verses to the translation, which seem to have been published very early in 1651, so he was thus still in contact with Hull during his Fairfacian retreat. The poem is of interest chiefly for its insight into Marvellâs view of translation. He believed strongly that the translator should be servant of the text and not try to be clever at its expense. Too many translators âare Authors grownâ and, by adding matter unnecessarily, âmake the Book their ownâ, a charge that could still be levelled at some poetic translators today. Translators who muddy the waters of good prose by their prolix additions are worse than those who miss out things from the original: âHe is Translations thief that addeth more,â writes the poet.
The other poem was a Latin verse addressed to Oliver St John, who was chosen in February 1651 to undertake a mission to the United Provinces to negotiate an alliance with the Dutch. He reached the Hague on 17 March, but the mission was unsuccessful and he returned in June. The existence of the poem indicates that in Yorkshire Marvell was not isolated from the political world.
The hints of impatience with rural seclusion in the Fairfax poems make it unsurprising that Marvell was now looking for new employment. It is unlikely that the thirteen-year-old Mary had nothing more to learn in the field of foreign languages, but her tutor was getting restless. It was time to call in some favours. And Marvellâs first approach was to another poet, John Milton.
10
I Saw Him Dead
So have I seen a Vine, whose lasting Age
Of many a Winter hath survivâd the rage.
The death of Cromwell, under whose influence Marvell had flourished throughout the mid-1650s, was a
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