HAPPY BIRTHDAY – Andrew Marvell, born 31 March 1621
Andrew Marvell
“Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.”
Andrew Marvell’s poem To His Coy Mistress is one of my favourite poems. He’d have had no trouble seducing me with those words!
Marvell is most famous for a poem about seduction, but he was actually a politician who was once tutor to Oliver Cromwell’s ward. He was friendly with John Milton, who worked for Cromwell, and was deeply involved in the Parliamentarian cause during the English Civil War. He wrote pamphlets criticising the monarchy, essays and satires and of course poems.
There’s a fine statue of him in Kingston upon Hull (which is near where he was born). Why not celebrate his birthday by reading his most famous poem and be seduced by his words.
Andrew Marvell died on 16 August 1678, aged 57.
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To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell
Andrew Marvell the Complete Poems by Andrew Marvell
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