The Garden – Summary
“The Garden”, by Andrew Marvell, is one of the most famous metaphysical poems of the seventeenth century. The speaker of “The Garden” starts by commenting on man’s vanity and inferiority in politics, war, and civil service. Instead, the speaker prefers to spend time in a private garden with “Fair Quiet” and its sister “Innocence.” The garden, according to the speaker, is a place of “sacred plants,” away from society’s “rude” demands. He praises the garden for its “lovely green” colour, which he considers superior to the white and red colours that are usually associated with passionate love.
The speaker, argues that when passion has run its course, love leads people to a contemplative life surrounded by nature. He extols the garden’s abundance of fruits and plants, imagining himself tripping over melons and falling on the grass.
Meanwhile, his mind drifts into a blissful state, enabling him to imagine and ponder “other worlds and other oceans.” The speaker then returns to addressing the garden where he imagines his soul separating from his body and perching like a bird in the trees. He compares the scene to the biblical Eden’s “happy gardenstate,” where God created Adam and Eve. The speaker imagines the garden as its own universe, complete with a sun that runs through a “fragrant zodiac” and an “industrious bee” whose work calculates the passing of time.
The poem’s main argument is to compare and contrast conscious and unconscious states, intuitive and intellectual modes of perception. Marvell’s thought is inferred by metaphors, but this distinction is never rendered directly. The poem incorporates the concepts of the conscious mind, which includes everything because it is understood, and the unconscious animal form, which includes everything because it is in tune with it. The argument isn’t that they’re fundamentally different, but that they have to stop being different in order for either to be recognised.
The poem The Garden is full of symbolism. The Garden of Eden, Earthly Heaven, and that garden to which the Stoic, Epicurean, and Platonist withdraw for solace or reflection are the gardens to which Marvell most clearly alludes in his poem. The poem starts by establishing that it is concerned with the garden of retirement, the garden of the contemplative man who avoids action. Man chases after palms, which represent winners, oaks, which represent kings, and Bayes, which represent poets, in vain, but retired life is quantitatively superior. When we evaluate behaviour in terms of plants, we get single plants, while retirement provides us with not just one, but all plants. The first stanza is thus a witty critique of active life, though it bears little resemblance to other types of garden poetry, such as libertine or Epicurean.
Analysis of The Garden
This poem was likely written in Marvell’s final years, when he had retired from tutoring Mary Fairfax, daughter of Thomas Fairfax (whom he addresses in Upon Appleton House, to my Lord Fairfax) who, in turn, was a General in the army of Oliver Cromwell. Marvell was a close friend of Charles I and was grieved by the interregnum period and the execution of Charles I by Charles II. This event may be attributed to his indifference towards war, distinctly observed throughout the poem. Marvell opens with this mood of futility of war; how vainly man tries to crown his deeds. This crown is made of branches of different trees and shrubs. Here Marvell draws beautiful imagery of how even flowers close themselves in the distant future. This again symbolises how power and authority will close upon its own malevolent nature once.
In the second stanza, he directly addresses the Garden. He calls it the sister of Innocence, epitomising it as the abode of peace, again contrasting to the rebellious feats of war. Since he has just retired from his tutorship, upon reflection, he feels that it is here in the garden that the true nature of life is encountered, and not in the busy company of men.
The third stanza goes further on how these men engage themselves and how the garden’s beauty is overlooked. The White and Red colours symbolise sexual passion, which, regardless, are no more amorous than the vastness and humility of green, since it is humility that paves the way to immortality. Here he employs a concept of the Renaissance school and also one of the Metaphysical school, that of Signatura Rerum, signature of all things, which implies that God left his mark on every object, which renders it its primary identity. This is perhaps what Kant would have called the thing-in-itself. This garden is also the retreat of all things, amorously desired by ‘mortal’ Gods. At this point, he draws Biblical references.
