Andrew Marvell is a veggiesexual

Marvell –

To his Coy Mistress – Typical carpe diem poem, first explaining that if they had all the time in the world, he would praise her as would be her due *with great line about how his ‘vegetable love grows’*. Then he jumps into the “but time is flying too fast for that” line, because it’s difficult to have sex after death. Then he finishes with the “so let’s get it on, baby!!”.

An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland – This begins by explaining how Cromwell has risen to power not through peace but through active violence – he’s likened to lightening striking in forks, and breaks down temples and palaces – by this, he becomes Caesar like, and, like lightening, it is madness to try and resist him. This could all be taken as praise or as cautioning of a particularly violent claim to power that, while irresistible, isn’t necessarily great, either. Marvell asserts in a way that Cromwell’s power seems to be ordained by heaven or by fate, and it works “to ruin the great works of time,” a phrase which is equally equivocal – it’s good perhaps if the works of time, however great, are unfair, yet they are still great works and the word “ruin” carries heavy weight. Cromwell starts to sound unjust, but the poem points out that he gained his power through strength and that the reigning monarch was weak. Charles is actually commended for doing nothing common or mean upon the scaffold – Marvell seems to assert that Charles took his death quite well. Charles’ dignified execution forms the basis of Cromwell’s forced power. Then poem then jumps into mentioning that the Irish have also found out the abilities of Cromwell (which seems to be fairly weighty as well, given Cromwell’s disgusting treatment of the Irish – I think he massacred them…) – the conquering of Ireland seems to be the rents that Cromwell must then lay down at the feet of his citizens. This says that Cromwell’s takeover has overturned the usual order of things, and that it is now the ruler, not the ruled, who must make rent payments – i.e., the power Cromwell won by force he is now keeping by payment (bribery?). Then the poem mentions the several other places Cromwell could likely conquer if he wished. Finally, the poem ends in a warning to Cromwell to keep vigilant, because as he has seized power by force, the likelihood of his keeping it for very long without recourse to more force isn’t particularly good.

The First Anniversary of the Government under His Highness the Lord Protector, 1655
Begins by pointing out that Cromwell has managed to accomplish more in one year that any monarch ever could – monarchs are always forced to leave their projects to their sons for completion. This leads into a lengthy anti-monarchical tract about how petty kings often are, and eventually turns kings into idols (the parenthetical ‘image-like’), which are incapable of changing the state of things, and yet seem to be a focal point for idolatrous adulation.
Contrast to this would be one faboo Mr. Cromwell, who is able to harmonize the heavenly spheres (quite high praise), and he’s a perfect alchemist. This troubles the natural order and hierarchy of things. We then get a string of images of music with war and music with alchemy, Cromwell being the creator-musician by which all of these stones and stubborn minds of men are perfected. By creating the Commonwealth, architect-Cromwell ha managed to take everyone in whatever opposing states of mind and get them all to help support the roof of the Senate building – basically saying that there isn’t any opposition in the Commonwealth because a place has been constructed for everyone to help hold it up. Cromwell then gets lifted up to a Jesus level, where he has the power of the Son in the sense that people are sort of forced to court his favor and do as told to by him – this whole section begins to smack of eschatological tendencies (“the great designs of latter days”), and talks of putting down the idolatrous Catholics who worship the Pope and Rome as their idols. Then we really get into eschatology, and Marvell’s comments that though some people seem to want the apocalypse, and though Cromwell seems to be the one to bring it, it may not be so and people still aren’t ready. Cromwell’s mother is then likened to an Eve who never actually ate the fruit, and Cromwell her sinless son who may one day be sacrificed for our sins – another Jesus reference. This is followed by more, in how Cromwell lowered himself in deigning to lead the army. This continues, along with a rant against the fifth monarchists, and then more discussion of Cromwell as Jesus or other sort of savior. The praise seems to be so high that it becomes difficult to take him quite seriously, and he throws in a line at the end of the poem that “Where did he learn those arts that cost us dear?” – not sure that this is high praise.

Upon Appleton House – The poem starts out with a meditation on space, how in nature the animals take up little more space then their bodies, and how man, in his pride, seems to need more, and makes a glancing comment that by needing to bend over to get through smaller archways, man may be practicing for having to do the same later trying to get into Heaven. The creation of the nunnery itself is an affront to Nature, since getting the stone for the nunnery destroyed much of the native beauty of the area and also took up ground that other people might have been able to build homes upon.
Now the poem flips into a fight between Fairfax and the nuns over who gets to keep Fairfax’s rich wife, Thwaites. The nuns argue in highly rhetorical flattery which gets at times pretty funny, telling Thwaites among other things that the current abbess is about to die and would like Thwaites to take her place, that sexual sins can be easily confessed and wiped clean, and hints of Thwaite’s ability to take a different virgin with her to bed every night to clasp in her arms – which seems to be a pretty clear reference to lesbianism within the convent, which seems to point to some sort of discomfort at the very idea of an all-female community. Thwaites is sucked in, and Fairfax goes in to reclaim her, being fought against by the nuns using prayers and statues to try and keep Thwaites. Fairfax wins (Thwaites seems to want to stay, however), and eventually gets to keep the nunnery itself – meaning Thwaites in a sense gets her wish and is queen over the estate anyway. Thwaites in all of this is silent – her voice is never expressed and her desires never known.
At this point the poet starts discussing the gardens, which become forts of the five senses. There is some sexual imagery, as in the moment where the bee is enclosed in a flower bud. The garden is read as a sort of would-be battle field, where gardeners instead of soldiers fight. The garden seems to be read in a sort of Edenic sense, and the flowers fighting against the gardener (if I’m reading this right) seem to be nature rebelling against humans. At any rate, this scene seems to be the beginning of an Edenic paradise, which humans then start destroying.
Now he moves into the mowers section. The mowers are tending the plant Conscience at first, which is a heavenly plant, but as the poem moves on, the humans divide nature as Moses did the Red Sea, and they begin to kill all the birds, which, in the face of the mowers, have no place to hide to avoid being massacred. The women then collect the dead birds for food. Humans are imagined as conquerors and destroyers of the natural order. This is a sin against nature, it seems. Then the fields are taken over by cattle, and the poem imagines deluvian vision of flooding, which works to move the humans away and cleanse nature again.
The narrator now really enters the poem and runs off to nature as a refuge. He enters a wood which seems impenetrable from the outside, but once inside shows itself to be a temple, where the nightingale chirps out a choral song and the doves, with rings on their necks signifying marriage, have a more mournful state. He even discusses how birds are able to make their homes out of decaying trees in part of the overall natural process. The poet refers to himself as an inverted tree – mankind in a sense seems to invert nature, but this also does seem to point to the shape of the body. In the grove, the poet is philosopher, great prelate, one who reads Nature’s mystic book – everything is harmonious. Therefore, he plops down and masturbates. Much of the language of the poem is very sexual for a while, and the woods are described in extraordinarily sexual language. He even asks that the woods bind him and penetrate him with brambles and briars so that he is forced to stay there.

This sensuality lasts until Maria wanders in and destroys his contemplation – in a sense, then, femininity destroys masculine communion with nature (hence the Edenic references – Maria is like Eve in that her appearance occasions the break from nature). Because Maria appears, the sun hides behind the clouds as it goes to bed and everything seems more covered than it was – “Maria such, and so doth hush / The world.” Maria then becomes a gardener in the sense that she orders and arranges the otherwise wanton, free nature of the preceding section. Maria seems to have her own aims in escaping to nature – stanza 90 refers to her escaping ‘the safe, but roughest way’ from the ambush of Love and her would-be suitors. There are a couple of stanzas that imply that women are only good in the absence of men, and that women, because beautiful, have no need for study, and then Maria is compared to mistletoe (a parasite) that her parents are gladly willing to get rid of – so the poet begs the wilderness to provide a sanctuary for Maria until she, like her mother Thwaites before her, is given off to a Fairfax of her own.

The last two stanzas seem to be addressed directly to Maria – “You, heaven’s centre, Nature’s lap, / And paradise’s only map” seem to be saying that her lap is the map to paradise – which is hugely sexual in a sense and seems to presage her loss of virginity. Eventually it becomes night and the two go in.

Mower Poems
The Mower against Gardens – Nature is inherently good, man is inherently corrupting. The mower signifies destruction, death and iconoclasm, whereas the fields are love, sex, and reproductions. The gardens are the places in which man has corrupted nature, forcing it to put on make up, changing the natural teleology of the plants, man is tyrant over the plants. In the fields, nature does everything as planned and the fauns are the gardeners, but by presence, not by action. The fauns then get created into statues to put in the gardens, again showing the destructive and artificial characteristic of gardens when under man’s control.
Damon the Mower – Damon was fine, but is not stung with love for Juliana. Loving Juliana has created a season hotter than most life can thrive in – only the snake seems okay. Lust for her is burning the fields. The heat seems to come directly from Juliana, though it also seems to have origin in the mowers’ lust for her. When Damon looks for some sort of aid or cool, there is none except paradoxically in Juliana, who refuses to help and thus is icy. Thus the moral is that man, when doing good work, is in harmony with nature and because of that harmony CAN do good work; Juliana, like Maria in ‘Appleton House,’ disrupts this order, forces him into a lack of harmony and of productivity. Lust creates a Fall which means that Damon can no longer view nature as he did – furthermore, his lust leads to self-destruction (or a fall). The only cure for the lust of Juliana is Death, which is the effect of the Fall – Death is also a mower, meaning that Damon’s job is that of causing death to nature (also a sign of the fall).
The Mower to the Glowworms – Juliana has shown up. There seems to finally be some sex going on by the last stanza. This has thrown everything into total disarray, Damon is no longer able to correctly read the signs of the glowworms that nature provides for him, and is instead lost in Juliana. This seems to mean that he’s fallen into a sort of idolatry – nature no longer has any deeper meaning – the lust for Juliana has meant that he cannot read correctly anymore. Damon fears he’ll never return.
The Mower’s Song – great discussion of what lust and love and sex with Juliana has done to him. Another meditation on how sex with Juliana (and thus heterosexuality, or women) mean that a fall must happen, life must be disrupted, and death and idolatry must follow. Therefore women disrupt the overall harmony of nature. The end of the poem shows that Juliana isn’t even there – the hapless mower is doing all of this to himself in the confines of his own tortured mind. End point: sex/lust leads to objectification.

The Garden – the poet finds in the garden an Eden of innocence and quiet. Society is corrupt. Gardens, however, are a sort of intersection between nature and culture or between man’s artifice and the natural world, and he laments about the amount of work and destruction men have gone to to tame nature for their ladies – when this is wrong because nature itself is far more beautiful. This flips into a stanza about fruit that is heavily laden with sexual imagery. Falling, the poet finds himself in a sort of ecstatic rapture in nature, which seems significantly like Donne’s moments of ecstatic love with his lovers in his poems. Garden sex? Anyway, the garden is great and fabulous and natural and everything at harmony until women show up, but when women show up, everything is messed up and men seem to lose two paradises – the garden, and their solitary pursuits.