Metaphysical poets, selected poems Contents
- Social / political context
- Religious / philosophical context
- Literary context: ideas and innovations
- Aire and Angels
- A Hymn to God the Father
- A Hymn to God, my God, in my Sicknesse
- A Nocturnall upon St. Lucies day
- At the Round Earth's Imagin'd Corners
- A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
- Synopsis of Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
- Commentary on Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
- Language and tone in Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
- Structure and versification in Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
- Imagery and symbolism in Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
- Themes in Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
- A Valediction: of Weeping
- Batter my heart
- Death be not Proud
- Elegie XIX: Going to Bed
- Elegie XVI: On his Mistris
- Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward
- Lovers' Infiniteness
- Oh my blacke Soule!
- Satyre III: 'On Religion'
- Show me Deare Christ
- Since She Whom I Lov'd
- Song: Goe, and catche a falling starre
- The Anniversarie
- The Dreame
- The Extasie
- The Flea
- The Good-morrow
- The Sunne Rising
- This is my playes last scene
- Twicknam Garden
- What if this present
- Aaron
- Affliction I
- Death
- Discipline
- Easter Wings
- Jordan I
- Jordan II
- Life
- Love II
- Man
- Prayer I
- Redemption
- The Church-floore
- The Collar
- Vertue
- Hymn in Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament
- Hymn to St Teresa
- St Mary Magdalene, or the Weeper
- To the Countesse of Denbigh
- Ascension - Hymn
- Man
- Regeneration
- The Night
- The Retreate
- The Water-fall
- A Dialogue between Soul and Body
- On a Drop of Dew
- The Coronet
- The Definition of Love
- The Garden
- The Mower Against Gardens
- The Mower to the Glo-Worms
- The Mower's Song
- The Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Faun
- The Picture of Little T.C. in a Prospect of Flowers
- To his Coy Mistress
- Upon Appleton House, to my Lord Fairfax
- An Elegie upon the Death of the Deane of Paul's Dr John Donne
- To a Lady that Desired I would Love her
Structure and versification in The Garden
Very ordered verse
The metre he uses in The Garden is Marvell's favourite, the iambic tetrameter arranged as couplets. Here the couplets sit in octaves, but typically the couplets carry the units of sense, whilst the stanzas act as paragraphs. It is a very ordered verse, and reinforces the sense of order within the garden and in Marvell's life itself. Whatever crazy energy he once had (stanza one), it is all well under control now. The couplet form allows these marvellously succinct, epigrammatic statements to be made, as in ll.47-48 or in stanza eight. Marvell has learned from the disciplines of classical verse, but the terseness is mitigated by the sensuousness of description. It must be one of the most perfectly controlled and ordered poems in the English language.
Investigating The Garden
- What do you find particularly effective about The Garden?
- How does Marvell draw the reader in?
- What is the difference between pastoral poetry and nature poetry?
The particular measurement in a line of poetry, determined by the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables (in some languages, the pattern of long and short syllables). It is the measured basis of rhythm.
A term used of speech rhythms in blank verse; an iambic rhythm is an unstressed, or weak, beat followed by a stressed, or strong, beat. It is a rising metre.
A line of verse consisting of four metrical feet (in modern verse) or eight feet (in classical verse).
A rhyming 2-line unit of verse.
The 8-line stanza of a Petrarchan sonnet, always occupying the first eight lines. It sometimes has a division halfway, creating two quatrains. It poses a problem or describes some single object or incident.
The technical name for a verse, or a regular repeating unit of so many lines in a poem. Poetry can be stanzaic or non-stanzaic.
To do with Ancient Greek and Roman civilisation or literature.
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