In the Penguin Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets Series volume of Garden Poems, the editor John Hollander included well over a hundred poems about gardens. Gardens have not always been popular to grow, but also popular to write poems about. Their peacefulness, beauty, and order fascinate us and provide us with an undisturbed and serene sensibility. They are also a way of managing nature, of exercising creative, God-like power over our environment. The prototypal garden is the Garden of Eden. One of the poems in Hollander’s book is Andrew Marvell’s (1621-1678) “The Garden.” In this poem, Marvell engages in the debate between living the public, active life and residing in the seclusive country home with one’s garden. Marvell incorporates allusions to biblical and classical literature.
The Garden I How vainly men themselves amaze To win the palm, the oak, or bays, And their uncessant labours see Crown’d from some single herb or tree, Whose short and narrow verged shade Does prudently their toils upbraid; While all flow’rs and all trees do close To weave the garlands of repose. II 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. III No white nor red was ever seen So am’rous as this lovely green. Fond lovers, cruel as their flame, Cut in these trees their mistress’ name; Little, alas, they know or heed How far these beauties hers exceed! Fair trees! wheres’e’er your barks I wound, No name shall but your own be found. IV When we have run our passion’s heat, Love hither makes his best retreat. 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. V What wond’rous life in this I lead! Ripe apples drop about my head; The luscious clusters of the vine Upon my mouth do crush their wine; The nectarine and curious peach Into my hands themselves do reach; Stumbling on melons as I pass, Ensnar’d with flow’rs, I fall on grass. VI Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less, Withdraws into its happiness; The mind, that ocean where each kind Does straight its own resemblance find, Yet it creates, transcending these, Far other worlds, and other seas; Annihilating all that’s made To a green thought in a green shade. VII Here at the fountain’s sliding foot, Or at some fruit tree’s mossy root, Casting the body’s vest aside, My soul into the boughs does glide; There like a bird it sits and sings, Then whets, and combs its silver wings; And, till prepar’d for longer flight, Waves in its plumes the various light. VIII 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! But ’twas beyond a mortal’s share To wander solitary there: Two paradises ’twere in one To live in paradise alone. IX How well the skillful gardener drew Of flow’rs and herbs this dial new, Where from above the milder sun Does through a fragrant zodiac run; And as it works, th’ industrious bee Computes its time as well as we. How could such sweet and wholesome hours Be reckon’d but with herbs and flow’rs!
The poem champions the reclusive, solitary life in one’s garden contrasted with the folly of believing worldly success and honors bring happiness. In stanza 1, the speaker criticizes “vainly men” who pursue fame and glory, hoping to win “the palm, the oak, or bays,” which symbolize military victory, political victory, and artistic glory respectively. Nature mocks these efforts, “their toils upbraid” and in their place offers instead “all flowers and all trees” which “weave” a greater, more profound gift than any of these so-called honors.
In stanza 2, the speaker recognizes two personified entities, “Fair Quiet and “Innocence thy sister dear,” whom he once believed he would find in society, “In busy companies of men,” only to learn that “Society is all but rude” when compared to the “delicious solitude” of country life where “Fair Quiet…/ And Innocence” make their home. In Marvell’s time, “[R]ude” meant not only obnoxious, but also uncultivated,” when comparing the “quiet” and “innocence,” while one is among “delicious solitude” as compared to worldly pursuits” among men. The society of men is both ill-mannered and unsophisticated.
The speaker turns from the realm of politics and business to focus on love and passion in stanza 3. He cites “white and red,” the lily and the rose, as the true inspired passion of the garden. Love and lovers are “cruel as their flame,” and love itself is purely foolish and destructive, illustrated by the wounding of the tree bark: “Fond lovers, cruel as their flame, / Cut in these trees their mistress’ name.” Furthermore, the simple beauty of the garden trees “far…exceed” the attractiveness of the beloved’s beauty.
Continuing his discourse on love and passion in stanza 4, the speaker seems to reduce lovemaking to mere physical lust and wants to escape from this “degradation” to the sanctuary of the garden: “When we have run our passion’s heat / Love hither makes his best retreat.” He employs two Greek myths as a kind of locus classicus (classic case) to refashion human love into a love of nature and its lyricism. Apollo and Pan pursued Daphne and Syrinx not to make love to them, but rather to transform each into musical instruments. These two myths of unbridled lust become purged of carnal desire. From this stanza, it becomes obvious that the speaker is not only looking to escape the “rude” and fierce world politics and business. The idyllic serenity of a garden is also one in which solitude frees him from the messy complications of love and sexual passion.
Implicit in stanzas 3 and 4 is the speaker’s desire to exclude not only the world of politics and business from his garden, but also women. “What a wondrous life in this I lead!” he states in the first line of stanza 5, as if he has discovered true happiness and more importantly, the purest little world in which to live. Here he can indulge in the luscious clusters of the vine…/The nectarine and curious peach” without effort and without interference from other human beings. His delight carries him through the garden until he stumbles “on melons,” becomes “Ensnared with flowers” and falls “on grass.” His “fall” is a parody of the Fall of Adam and Eve, but being alone, safe from the temptation of an Eve, his fall lands him benignly and unsullied on soft grass.
The “fall” in stanza 5 initiates the speaker’s metaphysical meditation that follows in stanzas 6 and 7. The speaker professes how in this garden his “mind from pleasure less / Withdraws into its happiness,” then transcends the limits of physical life to create “Far other worlds, and other seas.” As the mind expands with this vital energy, with an almost God-like power, his imagination frees the soul from the body and glides into unity with nature:
Here at the fountain’s sliding foot, Or at some fruit tree’s mossy root, Casting the body’s vest aside, My soul into the boughs does glide; There like a bird it sits and sings, Then whets, and combs its silver wings; And, till prepar’d for longer flight, Waves in its plumes the various light.
The speaker’s fusing with the “boughs,” and “buds,” seems to look ahead to the 19th century the Romantic poet, William Wordsworth, who celebrated man by linking or connecting one with nature in a harmonious union.
In the eighth stanza, “Such was that happy Garde-state…”, the speaker explicitly refers to the “happy garden-state,” the Garden of Eden, but a garden before the creation of Eve, when “man walked without a mate.” Implicit is that God’s subsequent creation of Eve brought evil into paradise. Thus, “After a place so pure and sweet, / What other help could yet be meet!” For the speaker, solitude is just as essential for happiness as the beauty of the garden is.
In the ninth and final stanza, the speaker mentions the “skillful gardener” who made a sundial out of the flowers and herbs. This ordinary gardener is an artist, and his work/creation emulates God’s creation in Genesis. Planting the “dial new” effectively measures time, establishing control over the force in nature that rules over humanity. The metaphor extends not to the hours of the day, but the “zodiac,” the movement of time through the months.
Marvell’s The Garden exalts the solitary, contemplative life over the active one. But more than that, his poem reaches back through time searching for the perfect, harmonious state in which man enjoyed immorality in a garden replicating Adam’s experience before the creation of Eve. For modern readers, this “happy garden-state / While man there walk’d without a mate” will seem misogynistic because the speaker implies man needed no “mate,” no Eve. Yet, it is important to remember that the 17th man lived in a benighted age that did not possess the truth that men and women are equal in every imaginable way. Marvell’s poem is nevertheless a fascinating treatment of our desire to be at peace with ourselves through a unity with nature and our fantasy of living in a contemplative paradise.