Six Centuries of Verse: Metaphysical & Devotional Poets 4/4

Herbert's poems were written and he died not long before the English Civil War. Through that conflict, in the years leading up to it, and in the aftermath of Cromwell's virtual dictatorship, poets took sides like anyone else. The followers of King Charles I, those who have been called the cavalier poets such as Lovelace, Suckling and Carew, were often smooth and witty and formal. But such qualities aren't to be found just on one side. Andrew Marvell became a consistent opponent of the King and he sat as Member of Parliament for Hull in one of Cromwell's last parliaments. Earlier on, he also worked as a civil servant, taking part in foreign negotiations and helping deal with foreign documents. In all this, and in his poetry, he had a sense of balance and fairness. In his lines addressed to Cromwell in the Horatian Ode, there's a real sympathy with the dignity of King Charles as he went to execution. He nothing common did or mean upon that memorable scene, but with his keener eye the axe's age did try. Along with Marvell's balance and fairness goes his elegance, most persuasively in one of his love poems, a beautiful piece of argument which Dunn would have approved of, to his coy mistress. 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. Thou by the Indian Ganges' side shouldst rubies find. I by the tide of Humber would complain. 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. A hundred years should go to praise thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze. Two hundred to adore each breast, but thirty thousand to the rest. An age at least to every part, and the last age should show your heart. For lady, you deserve this state, nor would I love at lower rate. But at my back I always hear time's winged chariot hurrying near, and yonder all before us lie deserts of vast eternity. 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 graves are fine and private place, but none, I think, do there embrace. Now therefore, while the youthful hue sits on thy skin like morning dew, and while thy willing soul transpires at every paw 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, that are the iron gates of life. Thus, though we cannot make our sun stand still, yet we will make him run.