22 pages 44 minutes read

Andrew Marvell

An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1681

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Poem Analysis

Analysis: “An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland”

On the poem’s surface, Marvell’s ode praises the unlikely rise of Oliver Cromwell. Much of the poem describes Cromwell’s conquest as a force as inevitable and natural as the strike of “three-fork’d lightning” (Line 13). The speaker characterizes Cromwell as an incidental yet necessary hero through diction, symbolism, and hyperbole. However, there are contradictions and mixed metaphors that subvert the speaker’s unfaltering logic and praise for Cromwell. The speaker holds strong sympathies for the beheaded King Charles I. It is unclear whether the speaker’s sympathies for Charles outshine Cromwell’s “active star” (Line 12). The poem ostensibly mythologizes Cromwell but one can also see the speaker’s anxieties about political and religious instability.

The poet’s characterization of Cromwell as both an unlikely and a predestined hero starts with the first two lines. The speaker describes Cromwell as a “forward youth” (Line 1); they suggest the future leader’s progressive, precocious, and proud nature with the word “forward.” Cromwell comes from an older tradition. He “forsake[s] his Muses” (Line 2), or the Ancient Greek goddesses of artistic inspiration to become a man of action. The speaker connects Cromwell to Ancient Greece—and later to Ancient Rome when comparing him to “Caesar” (Line 101).

Related Titles

By Andrew Marvell

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The World's Best Poetry, Volume 5 (Part 1): Nature

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Mary Mapes Dodge, George Darley, William Motherwell, George Eliot, John Milton, Clement Scott, George Arnold, Robert Browning, James Thomson, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., William Ernest Henley, Denis Florence MacCarthy, William Cullen Bryant, John Sterling, John Clare, Izaak Walton, Matthew Arnold, James Whitcomb Riley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Edward Jenner, William Gilmore Simms, Charles G.D. Roberts, Henry Timrod, William Cox Bennett, Bliss Carman, Archibald Lampman, George MacDonald, William Shakespeare, Matthias Claudius, Alexander Hume, James Beattie, Thomas Gray, Craig Franklin, John Cunningham, Norman Rowland Gale, James Gates Percival, Joel Benton, Thomas Heywood, Richard Hovey, Anna Boynton Averill, Charles Sangster, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Dora Hill Read Goodale, Joanna Baillie, Thomas Nashe, Henry Wotton, Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, John Howard Bryant, John G.C. Brainard, Thomas Campbell, Eduard Mörike, Algernon Charles Swinburne, William Morris, David Gray, William Cowper, W.B. Yeats, William Prescott Foster, Richard Henry Dana Jr., Thomas Carew, William Howitt, John B. Tabb, Jones Very, Henry Fielding, Barry Cornwall, Samuel Daniel, John Keats, Homer, George Francis Savage-Armstrong, John Leyden, Tomas Peter, Thomas Hood, Philip Pendleton Cooke, Richard Watson Gilder, Ethelwyn Wetherald, William Wordsworth, Euripides, Joseph Blanco White, Edmund Clarence Stedman, G.W. Pettee, Robert Tannahill, Ebenezer Jones, John Chalkhill, Abraham Cowley, Paul Hamilton Hayne, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, James Russell Lowell, Andrew Marvell, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Lisle Bowles, Leanne Yau, Charles Harpur, Sonia, Edith M. Thomas, Charles Kingsley, Lord Byron, Ebenezer Elliott, Benjamin Franklin Taylor, Richard Henry Horne, Jason in Panama, Walter Scott, Hartley Coleridge, Duncan Campbell Scott, Alfred Tennyson, John Davies, Aristophanes, Charles G. Eastman, Elizabeth Roberts MacDonald, William Browne, Robert Burns, Samuel Rogers, Ludwig H.C. Hölty, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Celia Laighton Thaxter

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To His Coy Mistress

Andrew Marvell