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Andrew Marvell Quotes

Andrew Marvell was an English metaphysical poet, satirist and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1659 and 1678. During the Commonwealth period he was a colleague and friend of John Milton. His poems range from the love-song "To His Coy Mistress", to evocations of an aristocratic country house and garden in "Upon Appleton House" and "The Garden", the political address "An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland", and the later personal and political satires "Flecknoe" and "The Character of Holland". Wikipedia  

✵ 31. March 1621 – 16. August 1678
Andrew Marvell photo

Works
To His Coy Mistress
Andrew Marvell
Bermudas
Bermudas
Andrew Marvell
Andrew Marvell: 35   quotes 3   likes

Famous Andrew Marvell Quotes

“Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime.”

Andrew Marvell To His Coy Mistress

Source: To His Coy Mistress (1650-1652)
Context: Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day.

“My love is of a birth as rare
As 'tis for object strange and high;
It was begotten by Despair
Upon Impossibility.”

Andrew Marvell

Stanza 1.
The Definition of Love (1650-1652)

“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.”

Andrew Marvell

The Garden (1650-1652)
Context: 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.

“Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.”

Andrew Marvell To His Coy Mistress

Source: To His Coy Mistress (1650-1652)
Context: 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.

“Love's whole world on us doth wheel.”

Andrew Marvell

The Definition of Love (1650-1652)

“How fit is he to sway
That can so well obey ("Horatian Ode," 83-84),”

Andrew Marvell

An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland (1650), lines 83-84; on political authority.

Andrew Marvell Quotes about love

“As lines, so loves oblique may well
Themselves in every angle greet;
But ours so truly parallel,
Though infinite, can never meet.”

Andrew Marvell

Stanza 7.
The Definition of Love (1650-1652)

“No creature loves an empty space;
Their bodies measure out their place.”

Andrew Marvell

Upon Appleton House, to My Lord Fairfax.

“I would
Love you ten years before the Flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow.”

Andrew Marvell To His Coy Mistress

To His Coy Mistress (1650-1652)

“Therefore the love which us doth bind,
But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the mind,
And opposition of the stars.”

Andrew Marvell

The Definition of Love (1650-1652)

Andrew Marvell Quotes

“Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity,
And your quaint honor turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.”

Andrew Marvell To His Coy Mistress

To His Coy Mistress (1650-1652)

Beauty , Thinking

“Where the remote Bermudas ride,
In th' ocean's bosom unespied.”

Andrew Marvell Bermudas

Bermudas (1657)

“How should I avoid to be her slave,
Whose subtle art invisibly can wreath
My fetters of the very air I breath?”

Andrew Marvell

The Fair Singer.

Art

“…the inglorious arts of peace…”

Andrew Marvell

Upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland (1650)

Peace , Art

“Art indeed is long, but life is short.”

Andrew Marvell

Upon the Death of Lord Hastings (1649), last line
Variant: "Art is long, and time is fleeting." Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, A Psalm of Life (1839).

Life , Art

“But bowed his comely head
Down as upon a bed.”

Andrew Marvell

Upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland (1650)

“So much one man can do,
That does both act and know.”

Andrew Marvell

Upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland (1650)

“But at my back I always hear
Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.”

Andrew Marvell To His Coy Mistress

To His Coy Mistress (1650-1652)

Lie , Time

“The world in all doth but two nations bear —
The good, the bad; and these mixed everywhere.”

Andrew Marvell

The Loyal Scot (1650-1652).

World

“Popery is such a thing as cannot, but for want of a word to express it, be called a religion; nor is it to be mentioned with that civility which is otherwise decent to be used in speaking about the differences of human opinion about divine matters…There has now for divers years a design been carried on, to change the lawful government of England into an absolute tyranny, and to convert the established Protestant religion into downright Popery…If under his present Majesty we have as yet seen no more visible effects of the same spirit than the firing of London…it is not to be attributed to the good nature or better principles of that sect, but to the wisdom of his Holiness, who observes that we are not of late so dangerous Protestants as to deserve any special mark of his indignation, but that we may be made better use of to the wrecking of those that are of our religion, and that if he do not disturb us, there are those amongst ourselves that are leading us into a fair way of reconciliation with him.”

Andrew Marvell

An Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government in England [1677] (reprinted in State Tracts: Volume I (1692), pp. 69 ff.).

Wisdom , Religion , Law , Way

“What wondrous 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,
Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass.”

Andrew Marvell

The Garden (1650-1652)

Life , Flowers , Grass , Wine

“Society is all but rude,
To this delicious solitude.”

Andrew Marvell

The Garden (1650-1652)

Solitude

“To make a bank was a great plot of state;
Invent a shovel, and be a magistrate.”

Andrew Marvell

The Character of Holland (c. 1653).

“An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.”

Andrew Marvell To His Coy Mistress

To His Coy Mistress (1650-1652)

Age , Heart , Parting

“Gather the flowers, but spare the buds.”

Andrew Marvell

The Picture of Little T.C. in a Prospect of Flowers.

Flowers

“Casting the body's vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide.”

Andrew Marvell

The Garden (1650-1652)

Soul

“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.”

Andrew Marvell To His Coy Mistress

To His Coy Mistress (1650-1652)

Youth , Soul , Bird , Sport

“While thus he threw his Elbow round,
Depopulating all the Ground,
And, with his whistling Sythe, does cut
Each stroke between the Earth and Root,
The edged Stele by careless chance
Did into his own Ankle glance;
And there among the Grass fell down,
by his own Sythe, the Mower mown.”

Andrew Marvell

Damon The Mower.

Grass , Chance

“He nothing common did or mean
Upon that memorable scene,
But with his keener eye
The axe's edge did try.”

Andrew Marvell

Upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland (1650)

“This indigested vomit of the Sea,
Fell to the Dutch by Just Propriety.”

Andrew Marvell

The Character of Holland (c. 1653).

Sea

“Orange bright,
Like golden lamps in a green light.”

Andrew Marvell Bermudas

Bermudas (1657)

Light

“p>Ye living lamps, by whose dear light
The nightingale does sit so late
And studying all the summer night
Her matchless songs does meditate;Ye country comets, that portend
No war, nor prince's funeral,
Shining unto no higher end
Than to presage the grasses's fall;Ye glow-worms whose officious flame
To wandering mowers shows the way,
That in the night have lost their aim
And after foolish fires do stray;Your courteous lights in vain you waste,
Since juliana here is come,
For she my mind hath so displaced
That I shall never find my home.”

Andrew Marvell

The Mover to the Glow-worms

War , Way , Home , Study

“In busy companies of men.”

Andrew Marvell

The Garden (1650-1652)

Men , Business

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