Andrew Marvell (1621 – 1678)
English metaphysical poet, and the son of an Anglican clergyman.
To make a bank was a great plot of state;
Invent a shovel, and be a magistrate.
Therefore the love which us doth bind,
But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the mind,
And opposition of the stars.
I would
Love you ten years before the Flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow.
Society is all but rude,
To this delicious solitude.
She with her eyes my heart does bind,
She with her voice might captivate my mind.
This indigested vomit of the Sea,
Fell to the Dutch by Just Propriety.
He nothing common did or mean
Upon that memorable scene,
But with his keener eye
The axe's edge did try.
Ye living lamps, by whose dear light
The nightingale does sit so late
And studying all the summer night
Her matchless songs does meditate;
Ye country comets, that portend
No war, nor prince's funeral,
Shining unto no higher end
Than to presage the grasses's fall;
Ye glow-worms whose officious flame
To wandering mowers shows the way,
That in the night have lost their aim
And after foolish fires do stray;
Your courteous lights in vain you waste,
Since juliana here is come,
For she my mind hath so displaced
That I shall never find my home.
Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day.
Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity,
And your quaint honor turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Art indeed is long, but life is short.
As lines, so loves oblique may well
Themselves in every angle greet;
But ours so truly parallel,
Though infinite, can never meet.
No creature loves an empty space;
Their bodies measure out their place.
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.
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.
My love is of a birth as rare
As 'tis for object strange and high;
It was begotten by Despair
Upon Impossibility.
The world in all doth but two nations bear —
The good, the bad; and these mixed everywhere.
The inglorious arts of peace.
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.
Casting the body's vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide.