42 GARDEN VERSES BY ANDREW MARVELL 



There like a bird it sits and sings, 

 Then whets and claps its silver wings, 

 And, till prepared for longer flight, 

 Waves in its plumes the various light. 



Such was that happy garden-state 

 While man there walked 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 are in one 

 To live in paradise alone ! 



The Garden. 



NOTES 



[Andrew Marvell, ' poet, patriot, and the friend of Milton,' 

 was born in 1621, near Hull, and died in 1678. His best poems 

 show a fine sense of natural beauty and a delicate felicity of 

 phrasing. But he also wrote some rather coarse satires. In 

 1650 he became tutor to Mary Fairfax, the young daughter 

 of Lord Fairfax, the Parliamentary General. It was at Appleton 

 House, near Bilborow Hill, that he wrote his poems on the 

 charms of rural retirement. In 1657 he became Milton's 

 assistant in the Foreign Secretaryship of Cromwell's Govern- 

 ment ; and two years later he sat in Richard Cromwell's parlia- 

 ment as M.P. for Hull.] 



I. LINE 1. I have a garden of my own. A girl is the speaker. 



II. LiNE5. Your sacred plants if here beloiv-$c. That is, If 

 the plants, Innocence and Quiet, grow at all on earth, they are 

 to be found only in rural retirement (among the natural plants 

 in a garden). 



8. To this delicious solitude. In comparison with, &c. 

 13. curious peach. Even more rare or delicious than the 

 nectarine. But it is possible Marvell uses ' curious ' in the 



