The Garden by Andrew Marvell
Created | Updated May 6, 2003
Life is hectic. People are bombarded with sensory input to an extreme. With daily news reports of war, poverty, social unrest, religious and political strife, it becomes more important that every person take time out from their busy schedule to stop and, as the cliché goes, "smell the roses." During the Protestant Revolution of 1650, Lord Thomas Fairfax retired from the army in opposition to Sir Oliver Cromwell’s Scottish Campaign. Fairfax retreated to his ancestral home, Nunappleton, and hired, for his daughter Anne, metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell as a tutor. In the vast Yorkshire countryside, Marvell found solace from the hectic world of business and war by spending lengths of time in the extensive manor gardens. Through his poem “The Garden,” Marvell resounds the idea that one’s mind can change the world by altering its own perceptions.
The world of 1650, the presumed time of the composure of “The Garden,” was beset with troubles. Puritans in England fought for control of the government and the expulsion of Catholics. Slavery was rampant in the colonies that were slowly destroying the native cultures of the nations they invaded. Marvel hoped to find peace from that world by taking a walk through a fantasized sundial garden full of gods, plants, animals, and insects representative of the worlds of Nature and Man. He scatters philosophical thoughts and references to religious and mythological figures as his mind wanders. Marvell weighs conflicting values, such as introspection versus action and or nature versus society. Throughout the poem, his unique humor can be seen as he pokes fun at his social group.
Marvell worships the quiet and innocence of the garden. It is his mental retreat, a place where he does not have to worry about the natural drives of man because they are satiated or non-existent. The need for food is taken care of by an overly generous nature in lines 34-38. The sex drive is elapsed and remodeled in lines 57-64. The garden offers all the peace and quiet one needs to be creative, as well as rewarding the narrator for renouncing the world of carnal desire and material greed (Friedman Critical 88).
Marvell believed in the Active Minde (sic), a belief that the intellectual side of the brain should overpower the emotional. The inactive mind is associated with emotions, desires, and animals. The Active mind is loftier and brings humans closer to a God-state. Marvell exercises his Godlike abilities in lines 47-48 where he simultaneously destroys and creates the garden in his head. Lines 17-18 feature the overpowering of the symbolic colors of pride and lust with the Marvellian symbolic color of serenity, green. “The concluding stanza declares that this world of time can, after all, be man’s paradise, if only, and only if (sic), he be content with sweet and wholesome hours, the only kind that can be measured by herbs and flowers” (Berthoff 146).
The opening two lines of “The Garden” utilize multiple meanings to set the stage for jokes made at the expense of society. “Vainly” means both “prideful” and “foolish” while “amaze” means both “to astound” as well as “to confound as if lost in a maze”(Friedman Critical 80). He continues the stanza scolding man for trying so hard to win emblems of nature when nature itself is free and as available as walking out the door. Nature is so giving, Marvell feels forced to mock the “busy companies of men” (line 12) by ultimately comparing it to “th' industrious bee” that “computes its time as well as we” (lines 69-70). Both the men and the bee toil their lives away: the bee after a year, the men after a few decades. Marvell insists that one’s toil may be sweetened by some “wholesome hours […] reckon'd, but with herbs and flowers” (lines 71-72)
On his walk, Marvell comments on the silent statues that populate the garden:
Fair Quiet, have I found thee here,
And Innocence thy sister dear?
Mistaken long, I sought you then
In busy companies of men:
Your sacred plants, if here below
Only among the plants will grow:
Society is all but rude
To this delicious solitude. (Marvell lines 9-16)
“Companies” in line 12 may refer to business or to military companies of soldiers; neither places for one to find innocence or quiet. By retreating to the garden, Marvell has found physical and mental peace leading directly to a feeling of spiritual happiness and fulfillment. Many of the ancient Nunappleton trees that Marvell loved so dearly were cut down to meet a wartime demand for timber. He considered such an act to be as horrendous as he later finds, in lines 19-20, the act of carving a lover’s name into the bark to be cruel (Caraway). The “sacred plants” in lines 13-14 refer to the fruits of a clear mind that “only among the plants will grow” because clear thoughts can only flourish in tidy environments, those not cluttered by noise or human vices.
The impact of the silent statues continues as he recounts the stories of Greek Mythology:
The gods, that mortal beauty chase,
Still in a tree did end their race;
Apollo hunted Daphne so
Only that she might laurel grow;
And Pan did after Syrinx speed
Not as a nymph, but for a reed. (Marvell lines 27-32)
In the myths, Daphne and Syrinx transform into plants, making it seem, to Marvell, that the gods of poetry and music quested not for carnal satisfaction but for botanical beauty. “That mortal beauty chase” is a pun on man’s adoration for beauty. M. C. Bradbrook is quoted by Friedman as saying, “that the only lasting satisfaction for the instincts is an activity which does not employ them for their original purpose (Friedman 85-87).” Bradbrook is illustrating the joy Marvell feels in the garden when using his instincts to explore and worship rather than hunt or hide, converting the tools of the inactive mind to the active mind. Marvell strives for ecstasy of the mind and soul through his appreciation of the beauty of nature. “‘The Garden’ presents a fictional and momentary attempt to recapture what has been lost,” namely, man’s connection with nature (Summers 46). The trees are more beautiful than women in line 22 because, in Marvell’s eyes, the trees are still perfect, never having succumbed to vice as mankind did.
The garden has many parts, most notable being the herb garden where flowers and herbs have been arranged so as to form a living clock. Marvell praises the gardener who could create such a wonder in lines 65-66. Many theorize that the “dial” is made of flowers that open and close at different times of the day. Another idea is that there are numerals spelled out in the plantings and arranged as the numbers would be on the face of a clock. Considering the influenced of the Active Minde (sic) on the garden, the sundial may not be a planned one but an accidental grouping that resembled a dial. It is possible also that the dial is more abstract, a chance formation where a gnomon of tall flowers rose above a cluster of shorter herbs creating the illusion of the dial similar to the way a passing cloud may resemble a roasted turkey. In this last case, the gardener is certainly God, creator of time and nature’s clock to control the lives of Man. The herbs and flowers fade in through the seasons and are therefore more temporal than trees. The dial is a world of instant lives (Bertoff 12).
Some critics believe that Marvel’s garden is completely artificial. The fruit in lines 34 through 39 are described as being “ripe” and “luscious.” These images are “not botanically sound” (Hodge 89). The apple, grape, peach, nectarine, and melon do not ripen in the same season, and none of these plants will grow in England without intense maintenance or a controlled environment (Legouis 45). The term “garden” may be a false application to a wooded glen or orchard (Donno 110).
Better than a real garden, the mental garden can be filled with its own objects of contemplation as elaborate as the mind can create (Friedman Pastoral 28). Young children can do this with great alacrity; notable is the “imaginary friend” and the ability to transmogrify the cardboard box into a castle, a tunnel, or a submarine. In “Upon Appleton House,” Marvell expressed his love of children and their innocent games of make-believe:
Unhappy! fhall we never more
That fweet Milltia reftore,
When Gardens only had their Towrs,
And all the Garrifons were Flowrs,
When Rofes only Arms might bear,
And Men did rofie Garlands wear?
Tulips, in feveral Colours barr'd,
Were then the Switzers of our Guard. (Caraway)
The image is of a green nursery of youth where guns and swords made of flowers and used in play, later sharply contrasted with real weaponry that destroys the garden (Long 206). Similarly, Marvell has transformed a mere garden into a wonderland of anthropomorphic trees and roaming metaphors of serenity that will last only as long as he can be alone in it:
While all the flowers and trees do close
To weave the garlands of repose!
Fair Quiet, have I found thee here,
And Innocence thy sister dear? (Marvell lines 7-10)
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach; (Marvell lines 35-38)
Such was that happy Garden-state
While man there walk’d without a mate:
After a place so pure and sweet,
What other help could yet be meet!
………………………………
Two paradises 'twere in one,
To live in Paradise alone. (Marvell lines 57-64)
Happiness is not dependant on material possessions or sexual intercourse. Marvell wants people to find their inner child and, in turn, find joy and prospect in daily life.
It is difficult to determine where Marvell fell in terms of politics. At times, his works may reflect Puritan conservatism, loyalism, opportunism, or a belief in the stability of a state of mixed religions. For the most part, Marvell was a royalist, but he also fervently believed in a constitutional government. He hated Samuel Parker and the Presbyterian majority in Parliament because of its efforts to crush Puritanism. His shifts in political beliefs tend to coincide with the beliefs of his employers; while working for Fairfax, he disliked Cromwell. Later Marvell would write “An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland” and support Charles II. If anything is to be learned from Marvell’s political standpoints, it is that the mind can be easily changed (Patterson 15).
Marvell thinks of nature as a glorious living entity given by God as recompense for The Fall. While in the garden, Marvell reenacts a more innocent fall in line 40: “Insnared (sic) with flowers, I fall on grass,” more innocent because, like a child, he is merely rolling in the wildflowers (Friedman Critical 88). Harmony for man is found in a divine symbiosis with nature, as it was before The Fall. The joys of intellectual peace are central to existence. “The mind, withdrawing from these lesser (physical) pleasures discovers and creates its own happiness: Meanwhile the mind, from pleasures less, /Withdraws into its happiness” (Martz 63, quoting Marvell lines 41-42). The term “annihilating” in line 47 does not mean destruction but spiritual annihilation where the mind blocks out sensory input and the spirit attempts to leave the body, comparable to astral projection. This is proved by the following lines 51-53: “Casting the body’s vest aside, /My soul into the boughs does glide; /There, like a bird, it sits and sings.”
Professor Frank Kermode insists that “The Garden” can be understood as a critical parody of the garden poems of his contemporaries. Both cavalier and metaphysical poets wrote poems of love and life set in gardens. With “The Garden” Marvell wants to broaden and complete the notions of the genre. In the opening two lines of “The Garden,” Marvell remarks “how vainly men themselves amaze” to win the palm, the oak, or bays,” stating how humorous it is for the poets to compete for awards while forgetting the purpose of creating poetry. He praises the poets for their skill but mocks their pretentiousness. Marvell utilizes multiple meanings for “vainly” and “amaze” to express puns and the different courses a reader could take when studying the poem (Friedman Critical 4). An argument can be made for the proposal that humans often make light of dark situations. Man laughs at what he is afraid of. Marvell encourages people to; when in disheartening situations, make intellectual jokes at the expense of the situation instead of falling to pessimism and depression.
The garden exists as a place to clear one’s head. Through his poem, Marvell resounds the idea that one’s mind can change the world, but the mind must also be open to change. The mind is extremely powerful and is the bridge between the animal and the devine. “Nature is less a pleasure to the mind then to its own thoughts but these thoughts are none the less natural. […] The poet enjoys not created pleasure, but the pleasures of creation” (Berthoff 149). The garden offers all the peace and quiet one needs to be creative, and all people are capable of creating “Gardens of the Mind”
The mind, that Ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas (Marvell lines 43-46)
Works Cited
Berthoff, Ann E. The Resolved Soul, A Study of Marvell’s Major Poems. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1970.
Bradbrook, M. C. And Thomas, M. G. Lloyd. Andrew Marvell. Cambridge: At the University Press, 1961.
Caraway, Angela C. “Appleton House: Andrew Marvell” A Local Habitation and a Name: Social Sites of Renaissance Lyrics. On-line. East Tennessee State University. Http://www.etsu.edu/english/sites/caraway.htm. Project Editor and Seminar Leader Dr. Jeffrey Powers-Beck.
Donno, Elizabeth Story II. Andrew Marvel: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1978.
Friedman, Donald M. Marvell’s Pastoral Art. Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1970.
- - - . “The Garden” Modern Critical Views Andrew Marvell. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York, Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publisher, 1989.
Haber, Judith Deborah. Pastoral and the Poetics of Self-Contradiction: Theocritus to Marvell. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Hodge, R.I.V. Foreshortened Time: Andrew Marvell & 17th Century Revolutions. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer Ltd, 1978.
Legouis, Pierre. Andrew Marvell: Poet, Puritan, Patriot. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970.
Long, Michael. Marvell, Nabokov: Childhood in Arcadia. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984.
Martz, Louis L. “The Mind’s Happiness” Modern Critical Views Andrew Marvell. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York, Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publisher, 1989.
Marvell, Andrew. “The Garden” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Gen Ed. Abrams, M. H. 7th ed. New York, London: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc, 2001. 683-685
Patrides, C. A. “Till Prepared For Longer Flight” Approaches to Marvell, The York Tercentenary Lectures. Ed. Petrides, C. A. London, Henley, and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978.
Patterson, Annabel M. Marvell and the Civic Crown. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1978.
Ricks, Christopher. “It’s Own Resemblance” Approaches to Marvell, The York Tercentenary Lectures. Ed. Petrides, C. A. London, Henley, and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978.
Rogers, John. The Matter of Revolution: Science, Poetry, and Politics in the Age of Milton. Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996.
Summers, Joseph H. “Marvell’s ‘Nature’” Andrew Marvell: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Lord, George deF. Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice-Hall Inc., 1968.
The world of 1650, the presumed time of the composure of “The Garden,” was beset with troubles. Puritans in England fought for control of the government and the expulsion of Catholics. Slavery was rampant in the colonies that were slowly destroying the native cultures of the nations they invaded. Marvel hoped to find peace from that world by taking a walk through a fantasized sundial garden full of gods, plants, animals, and insects representative of the worlds of Nature and Man. He scatters philosophical thoughts and references to religious and mythological figures as his mind wanders. Marvell weighs conflicting values, such as introspection versus action and or nature versus society. Throughout the poem, his unique humor can be seen as he pokes fun at his social group.
Marvell worships the quiet and innocence of the garden. It is his mental retreat, a place where he does not have to worry about the natural drives of man because they are satiated or non-existent. The need for food is taken care of by an overly generous nature in lines 34-38. The sex drive is elapsed and remodeled in lines 57-64. The garden offers all the peace and quiet one needs to be creative, as well as rewarding the narrator for renouncing the world of carnal desire and material greed (Friedman Critical 88).
Marvell believed in the Active Minde (sic), a belief that the intellectual side of the brain should overpower the emotional. The inactive mind is associated with emotions, desires, and animals. The Active mind is loftier and brings humans closer to a God-state. Marvell exercises his Godlike abilities in lines 47-48 where he simultaneously destroys and creates the garden in his head. Lines 17-18 feature the overpowering of the symbolic colors of pride and lust with the Marvellian symbolic color of serenity, green. “The concluding stanza declares that this world of time can, after all, be man’s paradise, if only, and only if (sic), he be content with sweet and wholesome hours, the only kind that can be measured by herbs and flowers” (Berthoff 146).
The opening two lines of “The Garden” utilize multiple meanings to set the stage for jokes made at the expense of society. “Vainly” means both “prideful” and “foolish” while “amaze” means both “to astound” as well as “to confound as if lost in a maze”(Friedman Critical 80). He continues the stanza scolding man for trying so hard to win emblems of nature when nature itself is free and as available as walking out the door. Nature is so giving, Marvell feels forced to mock the “busy companies of men” (line 12) by ultimately comparing it to “th' industrious bee” that “computes its time as well as we” (lines 69-70). Both the men and the bee toil their lives away: the bee after a year, the men after a few decades. Marvell insists that one’s toil may be sweetened by some “wholesome hours […] reckon'd, but with herbs and flowers” (lines 71-72)
On his walk, Marvell comments on the silent statues that populate the garden:
Fair Quiet, have I found thee here,
And Innocence thy sister dear?
Mistaken long, I sought you then
In busy companies of men:
Your sacred plants, if here below
Only among the plants will grow:
Society is all but rude
To this delicious solitude. (Marvell lines 9-16)
“Companies” in line 12 may refer to business or to military companies of soldiers; neither places for one to find innocence or quiet. By retreating to the garden, Marvell has found physical and mental peace leading directly to a feeling of spiritual happiness and fulfillment. Many of the ancient Nunappleton trees that Marvell loved so dearly were cut down to meet a wartime demand for timber. He considered such an act to be as horrendous as he later finds, in lines 19-20, the act of carving a lover’s name into the bark to be cruel (Caraway). The “sacred plants” in lines 13-14 refer to the fruits of a clear mind that “only among the plants will grow” because clear thoughts can only flourish in tidy environments, those not cluttered by noise or human vices.
The impact of the silent statues continues as he recounts the stories of Greek Mythology:
The gods, that mortal beauty chase,
Still in a tree did end their race;
Apollo hunted Daphne so
Only that she might laurel grow;
And Pan did after Syrinx speed
Not as a nymph, but for a reed. (Marvell lines 27-32)
In the myths, Daphne and Syrinx transform into plants, making it seem, to Marvell, that the gods of poetry and music quested not for carnal satisfaction but for botanical beauty. “That mortal beauty chase” is a pun on man’s adoration for beauty. M. C. Bradbrook is quoted by Friedman as saying, “that the only lasting satisfaction for the instincts is an activity which does not employ them for their original purpose (Friedman 85-87).” Bradbrook is illustrating the joy Marvell feels in the garden when using his instincts to explore and worship rather than hunt or hide, converting the tools of the inactive mind to the active mind. Marvell strives for ecstasy of the mind and soul through his appreciation of the beauty of nature. “‘The Garden’ presents a fictional and momentary attempt to recapture what has been lost,” namely, man’s connection with nature (Summers 46). The trees are more beautiful than women in line 22 because, in Marvell’s eyes, the trees are still perfect, never having succumbed to vice as mankind did.
The garden has many parts, most notable being the herb garden where flowers and herbs have been arranged so as to form a living clock. Marvell praises the gardener who could create such a wonder in lines 65-66. Many theorize that the “dial” is made of flowers that open and close at different times of the day. Another idea is that there are numerals spelled out in the plantings and arranged as the numbers would be on the face of a clock. Considering the influenced of the Active Minde (sic) on the garden, the sundial may not be a planned one but an accidental grouping that resembled a dial. It is possible also that the dial is more abstract, a chance formation where a gnomon of tall flowers rose above a cluster of shorter herbs creating the illusion of the dial similar to the way a passing cloud may resemble a roasted turkey. In this last case, the gardener is certainly God, creator of time and nature’s clock to control the lives of Man. The herbs and flowers fade in through the seasons and are therefore more temporal than trees. The dial is a world of instant lives (Bertoff 12).
Some critics believe that Marvel’s garden is completely artificial. The fruit in lines 34 through 39 are described as being “ripe” and “luscious.” These images are “not botanically sound” (Hodge 89). The apple, grape, peach, nectarine, and melon do not ripen in the same season, and none of these plants will grow in England without intense maintenance or a controlled environment (Legouis 45). The term “garden” may be a false application to a wooded glen or orchard (Donno 110).
Better than a real garden, the mental garden can be filled with its own objects of contemplation as elaborate as the mind can create (Friedman Pastoral 28). Young children can do this with great alacrity; notable is the “imaginary friend” and the ability to transmogrify the cardboard box into a castle, a tunnel, or a submarine. In “Upon Appleton House,” Marvell expressed his love of children and their innocent games of make-believe:
Unhappy! fhall we never more
That fweet Milltia reftore,
When Gardens only had their Towrs,
And all the Garrifons were Flowrs,
When Rofes only Arms might bear,
And Men did rofie Garlands wear?
Tulips, in feveral Colours barr'd,
Were then the Switzers of our Guard. (Caraway)
The image is of a green nursery of youth where guns and swords made of flowers and used in play, later sharply contrasted with real weaponry that destroys the garden (Long 206). Similarly, Marvell has transformed a mere garden into a wonderland of anthropomorphic trees and roaming metaphors of serenity that will last only as long as he can be alone in it:
While all the flowers and trees do close
To weave the garlands of repose!
Fair Quiet, have I found thee here,
And Innocence thy sister dear? (Marvell lines 7-10)
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach; (Marvell lines 35-38)
Such was that happy Garden-state
While man there walk’d without a mate:
After a place so pure and sweet,
What other help could yet be meet!
………………………………
Two paradises 'twere in one,
To live in Paradise alone. (Marvell lines 57-64)
Happiness is not dependant on material possessions or sexual intercourse. Marvell wants people to find their inner child and, in turn, find joy and prospect in daily life.
It is difficult to determine where Marvell fell in terms of politics. At times, his works may reflect Puritan conservatism, loyalism, opportunism, or a belief in the stability of a state of mixed religions. For the most part, Marvell was a royalist, but he also fervently believed in a constitutional government. He hated Samuel Parker and the Presbyterian majority in Parliament because of its efforts to crush Puritanism. His shifts in political beliefs tend to coincide with the beliefs of his employers; while working for Fairfax, he disliked Cromwell. Later Marvell would write “An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland” and support Charles II. If anything is to be learned from Marvell’s political standpoints, it is that the mind can be easily changed (Patterson 15).
Marvell thinks of nature as a glorious living entity given by God as recompense for The Fall. While in the garden, Marvell reenacts a more innocent fall in line 40: “Insnared (sic) with flowers, I fall on grass,” more innocent because, like a child, he is merely rolling in the wildflowers (Friedman Critical 88). Harmony for man is found in a divine symbiosis with nature, as it was before The Fall. The joys of intellectual peace are central to existence. “The mind, withdrawing from these lesser (physical) pleasures discovers and creates its own happiness: Meanwhile the mind, from pleasures less, /Withdraws into its happiness” (Martz 63, quoting Marvell lines 41-42). The term “annihilating” in line 47 does not mean destruction but spiritual annihilation where the mind blocks out sensory input and the spirit attempts to leave the body, comparable to astral projection. This is proved by the following lines 51-53: “Casting the body’s vest aside, /My soul into the boughs does glide; /There, like a bird, it sits and sings.”
Professor Frank Kermode insists that “The Garden” can be understood as a critical parody of the garden poems of his contemporaries. Both cavalier and metaphysical poets wrote poems of love and life set in gardens. With “The Garden” Marvell wants to broaden and complete the notions of the genre. In the opening two lines of “The Garden,” Marvell remarks “how vainly men themselves amaze” to win the palm, the oak, or bays,” stating how humorous it is for the poets to compete for awards while forgetting the purpose of creating poetry. He praises the poets for their skill but mocks their pretentiousness. Marvell utilizes multiple meanings for “vainly” and “amaze” to express puns and the different courses a reader could take when studying the poem (Friedman Critical 4). An argument can be made for the proposal that humans often make light of dark situations. Man laughs at what he is afraid of. Marvell encourages people to; when in disheartening situations, make intellectual jokes at the expense of the situation instead of falling to pessimism and depression.
The garden exists as a place to clear one’s head. Through his poem, Marvell resounds the idea that one’s mind can change the world, but the mind must also be open to change. The mind is extremely powerful and is the bridge between the animal and the devine. “Nature is less a pleasure to the mind then to its own thoughts but these thoughts are none the less natural. […] The poet enjoys not created pleasure, but the pleasures of creation” (Berthoff 149). The garden offers all the peace and quiet one needs to be creative, and all people are capable of creating “Gardens of the Mind”
The mind, that Ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas (Marvell lines 43-46)
Works Cited
Berthoff, Ann E. The Resolved Soul, A Study of Marvell’s Major Poems. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1970.
Bradbrook, M. C. And Thomas, M. G. Lloyd. Andrew Marvell. Cambridge: At the University Press, 1961.
Caraway, Angela C. “Appleton House: Andrew Marvell” A Local Habitation and a Name: Social Sites of Renaissance Lyrics. On-line. East Tennessee State University. Http://www.etsu.edu/english/sites/caraway.htm. Project Editor and Seminar Leader Dr. Jeffrey Powers-Beck.
Donno, Elizabeth Story II. Andrew Marvel: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1978.
Friedman, Donald M. Marvell’s Pastoral Art. Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1970.
- - - . “The Garden” Modern Critical Views Andrew Marvell. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York, Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publisher, 1989.
Haber, Judith Deborah. Pastoral and the Poetics of Self-Contradiction: Theocritus to Marvell. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Hodge, R.I.V. Foreshortened Time: Andrew Marvell & 17th Century Revolutions. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer Ltd, 1978.
Legouis, Pierre. Andrew Marvell: Poet, Puritan, Patriot. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970.
Long, Michael. Marvell, Nabokov: Childhood in Arcadia. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984.
Martz, Louis L. “The Mind’s Happiness” Modern Critical Views Andrew Marvell. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York, Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publisher, 1989.
Marvell, Andrew. “The Garden” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Gen Ed. Abrams, M. H. 7th ed. New York, London: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc, 2001. 683-685
Patrides, C. A. “Till Prepared For Longer Flight” Approaches to Marvell, The York Tercentenary Lectures. Ed. Petrides, C. A. London, Henley, and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978.
Patterson, Annabel M. Marvell and the Civic Crown. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1978.
Ricks, Christopher. “It’s Own Resemblance” Approaches to Marvell, The York Tercentenary Lectures. Ed. Petrides, C. A. London, Henley, and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978.
Rogers, John. The Matter of Revolution: Science, Poetry, and Politics in the Age of Milton. Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996.
Summers, Joseph H. “Marvell’s ‘Nature’” Andrew Marvell: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Lord, George deF. Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice-Hall Inc., 1968.
