Andrew
Marvell
born March 31, 1621, Winestead, Yorkshire,
Eng.
died Aug. 18, 1678, London
English poet whose political reputation
overshadowed that of his poetry until the 20th
century. He is now considered to be one of the
best Metaphysical poets.
Marvell was educated at Hull grammar school and
Trinity College, Cambridge, taking a B.A. in
1639. His father’s death in 1641 may have ended
Marvell’s promising academic career. He was
abroad for at least five years (1642–46),
presumably as a tutor. In 1651–52 he was tutor
to Mary, daughter of Lord Fairfax, the
Parliamentary general, at Nun Appleton,
Yorkshire, during which time he probably wrote
his notable poems “Upon Appleton House” and “The
Garden” as well as his series of Mower poems.
Although earlier opposed to Oliver Cromwell’s
Commonwealth government, he wrote “An Horatian
Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland” (1650),
and from 1653 to 1657 he was a tutor to
Cromwell’s ward William Dutton. In 1657 he
became assistant to John Milton as Latin
secretary in the foreign office. “The First
Anniversary” (1655) and “On the Death of O.C.”
(1659) showed his continued and growing
admiration for Cromwell. In 1659 he was elected
member of Parliament for Hull, an office he held
until his death, serving skillfully and
effectively.
After the restoration of Charles II in 1660,
Marvell turned to political verse satires—the
most notable was Last Instructions to a Painter,
against Lord Clarendon, Charles’s lord
chancellor—and prose political satire, notably
The Rehearsal Transpros’d (1672–73). Marvell is
also said to have interceded on behalf of Milton
to have him freed from prison in 1660. He wrote
a commendatory poem for the second edition of
Milton’s Paradise Lost. His political writings
favoured the toleration of religious dissent and
attacked the abuse of monarchical power.
At Marvell’s death, his housekeeper-servant
Mary Palmer claimed to be his widow, although
this was undoubtedly a legal fiction. The first
publication of his poems in 1681 resulted from a
manuscript volume she found among his effects.
While Marvell’s political reputation has
faded and his reputation as a satirist is on a
par with others of his time, his small body of
lyric poems, first recommended in the 19th
century by Charles Lamb, has since appealed to
many readers, and in the 20th century he came to
be considered one of the most notable poets of
his century. Marvell was eclectic: his “To His
Coy Mistress” is a classic of Metaphysical
poetry; the Cromwell odes are the work of a
classicist; his attitudes are sometimes those of
the elegant Cavalier poets; and his nature poems
resemble those of the Puritan Platonists. In “To
His Coy Mistress,” which is one of the most
famous poems in the English language, the
impatient poet urges his mistress to abandon her
false modesty and submit to his embraces before
time and death rob them of the opportunity to
love:
Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime. . . .
But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingéd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity . . .
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace. . . .
