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The voices / 24 fragments

Andrew Marvell

1620 AD — 1678 AD

Listed in the author section of Bartlett’s ninth-edition anthology, in the linked 1905 printing. Dates reflect that historical edition and may differ from modern scholarship.

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▷ Play this voiceSearch within this voice ↗Place in time ↗timemindpeaceknowledgedeathcouragewisdomwealth
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10Undated
Why should man’s high aspiring mind Burn in him, with so proud a breath: When all his haughty views can find In this world, yields to death; The fair, the brave, the vain, the wise, The rich, the poor, the great, and small, Are each, but worm’s anatomies, To strew his quiet hall. Power may make many earthly gods, Where gold, and bribery’s guilt, prevails; But death’s unwelcome honest odds, Kicks o’er the unequal scales. The flatter’d great, may clamours raise Of power,—and their own weakness hide; But death shall find unlooked-for ways To end the farce of pride. Death levels all things, in his march Nought can resist his mighty strength; The palace proud,—triumphal arch, Shall mete their shadow’s length: The rich, the poor, one common bed Shall find, in the unhonoured grave, Where weeds shall crown alike the head Of tyrant, and of slave.
Andrew Marvell / quote
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11Undated
See how the orient dew, Shed from the bosom of the morn, Into the blowing roses, Yet careless of its mansion new, For the clear region where ’twas born, Round in itself incloses: And in its little globe’s extent, Frames as it can its native element. How it the purple flower does slight! Scarce touching where it lies; But gazing back upon the skies, Shines with a mournful light, Like its own tear, Because so long divided from the sphere. Restless it rolls and insecure, Trembling lest it grow impure, Till the warm sun pities its pain, And to the skies exhales it back again. So the soul, that drop, that ray Of the clear fountain of eternal day, Could it within the human flower be seen, Remembering still its former height, Shuns the sweet leaves and blossoms green. And recollecting its own light, Does in its pure and circling thoughts express The greater heaven in an heaven less. In how coy a figure wound, Every way it turns away; So the world excluding round, Yet receiving in the day; Dark beneath but bright above, Here disdaining, there in love: How loose and easy hence to go; How girt and ready to ascend; Moving but on a point below, It all about does upwards bend, Such did the manna’s sacred dew distil, White and entire although congeal’d and chill; Congeal’d on earth; but does dissolving run Into the glories of the Almighty sun.
Andrew Marvell / quote
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17Undated
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.
Andrew Marvell / quote
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