The English metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell is most commonly associated with his contemporaries, John Donne, George Herbert, and his colleague and friend, John Milton. His most famous poem "To His Coy Mistress" is a seductive chant to a would-be lover to seize the moment. "The Garden" is an ode to the tranquility of a retirement from public life. Marvell, who was himself a politician, opines for the simpler life of the garden. Also included in this collection are "An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland," "The Mower's Song" and the country house poem "Upon Appleton House." The entire corpus of Marvell's poetry is brought together here in this edition of "The Complete Poems of Andrew Marvell," which has been edited with a memorial introduction by Rev. Alexander B. Grosart. T. S. Eliot wrote of Marvell's work that "it is more than a technical accomplishment, or the vocabulary and syntax of an epoch; it is what we have designated tentatively as wit, a tough reasonableness beneath the slight lyric grace."
