C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
The Garden
By Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)
H
To win the palm, the oak, or bays:
And their incessant labors see
Crowned from some single herb, or tree,
Whose short and narrow-vergèd shade
Does prudently their toils upbraid;
While all the flowers and trees do close,
To weave the garlands of repose.
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.
So amorous as this lovely green.
Fond lovers, cruel as their flame,
Cut in these trees their mistress’s name.
Little, alas! they know or heed,
How far these beauties her exceed!
Fair trees! where’er your barks I wound,
No name shall but your own be found.
Love hither makes his best retreat.
The gods, who 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.
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,
Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass.
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.
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 claps its silver wings;
And till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.
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.
Of flowers 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 reckoned, but with herbs and flowers?