Andrew Marvell Biography - Nneka

Andrew Marvell was an English metaphysical poet, satirist and politician and had even sat in the house of commons between 1659 and 1678, During the Commonwealth period. He was born in winestead, England on the 31st of march 1621; he died at 57 on the 16 August 1678 in London. His most famous works were: "To His Coy Mistress", "The Garden", "An Horatian Ode". Andrew was said to be the single most compelling embodiment of the change that came over English society. He was a poet with an array of exquisite lyrics that blend Cavalier grace with Metaphysical wit and complexity. Marvell's first poems, which were written in Latin and Greek were published when he was still at Cambridge and lamented a visitation of the plague and celebrated the birth of a child to king charles I. Marvell served as tutor to the daughter of the Lord General Thomas Fairfax, who had recently relinquished command of the Parliamentary army to Cromwell. He lived during that time at Nun Appleton Hall, near York, where he continued to write poetry. One poem, "Upon Appleton House, To My Lord Fairfax", uses a description of the estate as a way of exploring Fairfax's and Marvell's own situation in a time of war and political change. Probably the best-known poem he wrote at this time is "To His Coy Mistress". Andrews works are said to contain religious themes and satirical material.


Examples:

• Eyes and Tears
• Bermudas
• Clorinda and Damon
• Two Songs at the Marriage of the Lord Fauconberg and the Lady Mary Cromwell
• A Dialogue between the Soul and Body
• The Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Fawn
• Young Love

The definition of love 

My love is of a birth as rare 

As ’tis for object strange and high; 

It was begotten by Despair 

Upon Impossibility. 

Magnanimous Despair alone 

Could show me so divine a thing 

Where feeble Hope could ne’er have flown, 

But vainly flapp’d its tinsel wing. 

And yet I quickly might arrive 

Where my extended soul is fixt, 

But Fate does iron wedges drive, 

And always crowds itself betwixt. 

For Fate with jealous eye does see 

Two perfect loves, nor lets them close; 

Their union would her ruin be, 

And her tyrannic pow’r depose. 

And therefore her decrees of steel 

Us as the distant poles have plac’d, 

(Though love’s whole world on us doth wheel) 

Not by themselves to be embrac’d; 

Unless the giddy heaven fall, 

And earth some new convulsion tear; 

And, us to join, the world should all 

Be cramp’d into a planisphere. 

As lines, so loves oblique may well 

Themselves in every angle greet; 

But ours so truly parallel, 

Though infinite, can never meet. 

Therefore the love which us doth bind, 

But Fate so enviously debars, 

Is the conjunction of the mind, 

And opposition of the stars.