You, Andrew Marvell Analysis

      
And here face down beneath the sun
And here upon earth's noonward height
To feel the always coming on
The always rising of the night

To feel creep up the curving east
The earthy chill of dusk and slow
Upon those under lands the vast
And ever climbing shadow grow

And strange at Ecbatan the trees
Take leaf by leaf the evening strange
The flooding dark about their knees
The mountains over Persia change

And now at Kermanshah the gate
Dark empty and the withered grass
And through the twilight now the late
Few travelers in the westward pass

And Baghdad darken and the bridge
Across the silent river gone
And through Arabia the edge
Of evening widen and steal on

And deepen on Palmyra's street
The wheel rut in the ruined stone
And Lebanon fade out and Crete
High through the clouds and overblown

And over Sicily the air
Still flashing with the landward gulls
And loom and slowly disappear
The sails above the shadowy hulls

And Spain go under the the shore
Of Africa the gilded sand
And evening vanish and no more
The low pale light across that land

Nor now the long light on the sea

And here face downward in the sun
To feel how swift how secretly
The shadow of the night comes on...

.: :.

Think "Carpe Diem," folks. This poem concerns itself with the passage of time and the encroaching dark--take "dark" as you will (age, death, corruption, the fall of civilizations, etc. etc.). These lines from Marvell's own "To His Coy Mistress" should help:
But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near.
It's also interesting to note that the cities move from east to west, as does the sun (and, arguably, technology and colonization, depending on your orientation and the window of world history you consider).
Mrs. M (English teacher in Utah)

| Posted on 2009-03-27 | by a guest