The Garden Man and the Natural World Quotes

By calling society rude or uncivilized, Marvell inverts what we normally think of as civilization. It creates a really interesting contrast between just how uncivilized people can be towards each other and how easily and peacefully nature seems to coexist.

What's the deal here? Does the speaker's comparison of the destructiveness of fire to love and romantic relationships mean that he sees all human relationships as being totally worthless? Or do the trees just make for better friends?

It's not explicit, but Marvell is bringing color back into the poem here. We at Shmoop are imagining big, red, juicy apples and dark purple grapes—all rich colors that contribute to the luxuriousness of the picture being painted in the stanza. The awesome thing about poetry, though, is that it lets you imagine things looking anyway you like.

Here's a great example of the pastoral imagery at work in Marvell's poem. The bounty of nature is almost forcing itself on the speaker. All he has to do is lie back, relax, and enjoy it.

Relaxation, it seems, is necessary if the speaker's soul is going to separate itself from the body. This passage communicates that the speaker is relaxed by describing him as propped up by the foot of a fountain or sitting at the base of a tree, but in what ways do the other stanzas communicate the same thing?

We think the scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz knew what Marvell meant.