I have to admit to feeling pretty uninspired to post a poem this week and I didn’t post one last week – due to being preoccupied filling a skip and wanted to find a poem about a skip which was a bit ridiculous! Anyway, I do like rediscovering poems and this has certainly come true this week with Andrew Marvell. I was looking for a poem about May, then about gardening, and came across Andrew Marvell. I had forgotten how much I liked Marvell’s poetry when I was an Eng. Lit student. So I thought this one would be a good one for today. I have always loved his imagery as it is so evocative and rich. I am glad now that I kind of forced myself to find a poem as I spent some time reading the longer poems of Marvell and remembering what I liked about him! Maybe I will find that poem about a skip now too.
The Fair Singer
To make a final conquest of all me,
Love did compose so sweet an enemy,
In whom both beauties to my death agree,
Joining themselves in fatal harmony;
That while she with her eyes my heart does bind,
She with her voice might captivate my mind.
I could have fled from one but singly fair,
My disentangled soul itself might save,
Breaking the curled trammels of her hair.
But how should I avoid to be her slave,
Whose subtle art invisibly can wreath
My fetters of the very air I breathe?
It had been easy fighting in some plain,
Where victory might hang in equal choice,
But all resistance against her is vain,
Who has th’advantage both of eyes and voice,
And all my forces needs must be undone,
She having gained both the wind and sun.