Andrew Marvell (1621 – 1678)
English metaphysical poet, and the son of an Anglican clergyman.
The world in all doth but two nations bear —
The good, the bad; and these mixed everywhere.
What wondrous life in this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons, as I pass,
Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass.
So much one man can do,
That does both act and know.
But bowed his comely head
Down as upon a bed.
Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less
Withdraws into its happiness;
The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight 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.
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
Where the remote Bermudas ride,
In th' ocean's bosom unespied.
How should I avoid to be her slave,
Whose subtle art invisibly can wreath
My fetters of the very air I breath?
And all the way, to guide their chime,
With falling oars they kept the time.
While thus he threw his Elbow round,
Depopulating all the Ground,
And, with his whistling Sythe, does cut
Each stroke between the Earth and Root,
The edged Stele by careless chance
Did into his own Ankle glance;
And there among the Grass fell down,
by his own Sythe, the Mower mown.
In busy companies of men.
Love's whole world on us doth wheel.
Orange bright,
Like golden lamps in a green light.
Casting the body's vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide.
Popery is such a thing as cannot, but for want of a word to express it, be called a religion; nor is it to be mentioned with that civility which is otherwise decent to be used in speaking about the differences of human opinion about divine matters...There has now for divers years a design been carried on, to change the lawful government of England into an absolute tyranny, and to convert the established Protestant religion into downright Popery...If under his present Majesty we have as yet seen no more visible effects of the same spirit than the firing of London...it is not to be attributed to the good nature or better principles of that sect, but to the wisdom of his Holiness, who observes that we are not of late so dangerous Protestants as to deserve any special mark of his indignation, but that we may be made better use of to the wrecking of those that are of our religion, and that if he do not disturb us, there are those amongst ourselves that are leading us into a fair way of reconciliation with him.
The inglorious arts of peace.
To make a bank was a great plot of state;
Invent a shovel, and be a magistrate.
My love is of a birth as rare
As 'tis for object strange and high;
It was begotten by Despair
Upon Impossibility.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
Now therefore while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
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.