I.  Marvell's "The Mower Against Gardens" and "Bermudas"

1.  "The Mower Against Gardens" is one of several poems that Marvell wrote using the persona of Damon the Mower, a rural type even more rustic than the conventional shepherds of the pastoral mode.  The mower is one with nature; he doesn't use fertilizers or plows, he doesn't graft plants to make hybrids, he doesn't use the arts of horticulture or agricultural husbandry.  Instead, he's like the gatherer half of a hunter/gatherer tribe: he mows, with his scythe, the green grasses which nature provides; he makes his living taking what Nature in its pure form has to offer.  Here, he describes other ways of life in very disapproving terms.  Paying particular attention to the "us" in line 40, explain his attitudes.  Who is meant by "us"?  Who are the "gods" he refers to, and why is he so careful to affirm that they dwell with "us"?  To whom does he address himself?  What does he hope to accomplish (if anything)?

2.  The mower describes fallen man as tainting the natural world in which he lives.  By using the word "seduce" in line 2, moreover, he characterizes that tainting in sexual terms; trace the images in which he describes nature and natural things as female or feminine in relation to a corrupting masculine force; what is the effect of this imagery?

3.  Later in the poem, the mower turns from images of the female corrupted by the male to images of mixed species or race (lines 21-26) and of asexuality (including that of the eunuchs [neutered males] who guard a seraglio [a harem]).  Paraphrase lines 21-26 and 27-30, and explain why the speaker is so upset by the horticultural techniques here described.

4.  What implications do the mower's judgments have for the reader's understanding of Marvell's poetic artistry?  On one level, "The Mower Against . . ." would seemed to be informed by a Puritan distrust of artifice.  To what extent are the imagery and form of the poem in tension with the mower's tirade against artifice?
 
5.  How does the verse form of "The Mower Against Gardens" relate to its content?  That is, what use does Marvell make of a verse form consisting of couplets in which the first line is in pentamenter (5 beats), the second tetrameter (4 beats)?

6.  In "Bermudas," what effect does Marvell achieve by placing the "song" of the English pilgrims within the frame formed by the opening and closing quatrains?  How would the poem be different if that frame were omitted?

7.  How does the portrait of the Bermudas in Marvell's poem compare with the image of Virginia in Drayton's "Ode.  To the Virginian Voyage"?  To the view of Eden in Milton's Paradise Lost?

8.  What sort of religion is practiced by the singers of the song?  Taking into consideration the introduction to the early seventeenth century in the Norton (particularly the discussion of seventeenth-century religious disputes), but relying principally upon the assertions and images in the text, articulate in your own words the principal articles of faith embraced by the rowers of the "small boat."

9.  Who is the speaker of the framing quatrains?  Is that speaker a member of the group who sing the song?  What is his/her attitude toward the group?

10.  Ponder particularly the significance of the words and phrases: "unespied," "listening winds," "these rocks," "frame," "Echo," "falling oars" and "kept the time."

II.  Lovelace's "Love Made in the First Age: To Chloris"

In this poem, Lovelace uses paradisal/golden age imagery very differently from the way that Marvell uses it in the other two poems assigned for today.  As Rivers explains, Cavalier poets like Lovelace (gentleman poets allied with the royalist cause against the Puritans) often used paradise as "an image of complete sexual freedom."

1.  The first nine stanzas of "Love Made in the First Age: To Chloris" explore the delights of a sexual golden age in terms that imply that the work is a seduction poem and that the speaker's goal is to seduce Chloris.  Leaving aside for a moment the final stanza, consider how the language of those first nine stanzas works.   Does it awaken sexual desire?  What sort of effects does the imagery have?  How does the rhyme scheme contribute?

2.  Again considering only stanzas 1-9, how does the rhetoric of the speaker compare to that of a poet attempting to seduce through the "carpe diem" argument?

3.  In the final stanza of the poem, there's a surprise: the speaker's ultimate goal is not seduction.  What is the point of his address to Chloris?  What alternative[s] to requited love does he select?

4. Is there a serious philosophy underlying the sensuous imagery and moral decadence of Lovelace's poem?  If so, what is it?