Andrew Marvell (1621–1678), whose birthday we commemorate today, numbers among the English metaphysical poets active throughout the seventeenth century. A generation behind those metaphysical greats, John Donne and George Herbert, Marvell seems, like the era itself, more chameleonic than they were — more the sort of man to survive that century’s upheavals. 

He might, for a start, almost have been a Cavalier. Among his first poems, written during his undergraduate days at Cambridge, was a celebration of the birth of a child to King Charles I. Later, during the Protectorate, Marvell served as tutor to Oliver Cromwell’s ward and as Latin Secretary to Cromwell’s Council of State, a position he shared with the blind John Milton. Upon the Restoration, he became an apologist for his friend Milton, helping to avert Milton’s execution for his writings against monarchy. Marvell’s own satirical poems, meanwhile, criticizing the corruption of the court of Charles II, were published anonymously during his lifetime. Following a turn in Parliament, during which he wrote and circulated those politically sensitive verses, Marvell retired to a relatively quiet and prosperous existence as agent for a shipmasters’ guild. 

Marvell’s poems demonstrate the same chameleonic range as his personal and political affiliations. “A Dialogue Between the Soul and the Body,” for example, demonstrates his metaphysical capacity for knotty theological idea-smithing. On the other hand, his most famous poem, “To His Coy Mistress,” belongs in the standard Cavalier playbook, with its theme that there’s never enough time for all the sex you want to have. Today’s Poem of the Day, meanwhile, ticks along like time itself, in regular tetrameter abab quatrains. Although its pastoral speaker’s path is lit by glow worms, he has, alas, fallen in love and fumbles hopelessly in the dark.  

The Mower to the Glow-Worms 
by Andrew Marvell 
 
Ye living lamps, by whose dear light 
The nightingale does sit so late, 
And studying all the summer night, 
Her matchless songs does meditate; 
 
Ye country comets, that portend 
No war nor prince’s funeral, 
Shining unto no higher end 
Than to presage the grass’s fall; 
 
Ye glow-worms, whose officious flame 
To wand’ring mowers shows the way, 
That in the night have lost their aim, 
And after foolish fires do stray; 
 
Your courteous lights in vain you waste, 
Since Juliana here is come, 
For she my mind hath so displac’d 
That I shall never find my home. 

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With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems are drawn from the deep traditions of English verse: the great work of the past, together with the living poets who keep those traditions alive. The goal is always to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.