The great seventeenth-century metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell was one of the chief wits and satirists of his time as well as a passionate defender of individual liberty. Today, however, he is known chiefly for his brilliant lyric poems, including “The Garden,” “The Definition of Love,” “Bermudas,” “To His Coy Mistress,” and the “Horatian Ode” to Cromwell. Marvell’s work is marked by extraordinary variety, ranging from incomparable lyric explorations of the inner life to satiric poems on the famous men and important issues of his time–one of the most politically volatile epochs in England’s history. From the lover’s famous admonition, “Had we but World enough, and Time, / This coyness, Lady, were no crime,” to the image of the solitary poet “Annihilating all that’s made / To a green Thought in a green Shade,” Marvell’s poetry has earned a permanent place in the canon and in the hearts of poetry lovers.
