Selected Poems

Marvell's oeuvre must be one of the smallest of any major English poet, but that he is a major poet is no longer contested. Very little is known of his life: he was born in 1621, in Yorkshire; he tutored the daughter of the parliamentarian general Thomas Fairfax at Nun Appleton; he spent some time abroad; he was a friend of Milton's and MP for Hull 1659-1677. His poems range from the public "An Horatian Ode Upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland", perhaps the gre atest political poem in English, to the exquisite lyricism of "The Mower to the Glow-worms".