An Horatian Ode upon Cromvell's Return From Ireland

Horatian Ode

 

MEG01 - Block-3 Unit-16 Andrew Marvell: A Study of his Poems

 

An Horatian Ode upon Cromvell's Return From Ireland (1650). 

 

The attitude towards Cromwell 4 in this poem will be a complex one. This complexity is reflected in the ambiguity of the compliments paid to him. This becomes clear in the very second word of the poem. 'Forward' may mean 'high-spirited', 'ambitious', but it can also *mean . 'presumptuous', 'pushing'. 

The speaker does not identify Cromwell as the forward youth or directly say that Cromwell's career has been motivated by a striving for fame.

The lightning is conceived as tearing through the side of his own body - the cloud. Metaphorically then, Cromwell has not spared his own body; there is therefore no reason to be surprised that he has not spared the body of Charles. If nature will not tolerate a power vacuum, nor will it allow two bodies ("spirits") to occupy the same space. Two spirits must jostle one another, and one must give way : Cromwell's is therefore not a vulgar ambition

Cromwell is then a marked man, a man of destiny, but he is not merely governed by his star. Active though it be, he cannot remain passive, he is not merely urged by it, but himself urges it' on. 

Marvell insists that Cromwell was deaf to the complaint of justice and that the power achieved by Cromwell is a 'forced power' (66). But the speaker is a realist who knows that a kingdom cannot be held by 'merely pleading - 'ancient rights'

 the speaker chooses to emphasize Cromwell's virtues as a man and likewise those of Charles as man. The poem does not debate which of the two was right

Charles on the other hand the man of passion, the man who is acted upon, who knows how to suffer. The contrast is pointed out in half a dozen different ways. In the celebrated stanzas on the execution, there is ironic realism as well as admission - he is the "Royal Actor" who knows his assigned part and performs it with dignity.

Cromwell now falls from the sky not as a thunderbolt, but as the hunting hawk. The trained falcon is not a wanton destroyer, nor an irresponsible one. It knows its master; it is perfectly disciplined.

In the last two stanzas he addresses Cromwell directly, He salutes him as "the wars and Fortunes Son", in that he is the master of battle. It can also mean that he is a creature of wars and the product of fortune. The earlier references to Cromwell as a natural phenomena certainly lend support to this reading - power has come to him through wars in troubled times and he has no sanction for his power in "ancient Rights". 

The poem progresses in two movements and the celebrated stanzas on shackles'

execution divide the poem into two distinct parts - first, Cromwell's rise to power;

and second Cromwell's wielding of that supreme power.

 

Political Poem - 

Ode is a Short lyrical poem in stanzas of 2 or 4 lines.

 stanzas of four lines. 

Each stanza has a rhymed couplet in iambic tetrameter and a rhymed couplet in iambic trimeter. (120 lines)

Written between May-July 1650

 

You can check out my YouTube videos on the same topic where I have explained everything in Hindi in detail. Links are below-

 

Block-3 The Metaphysical Poets: Donne, Herbert

Marvell's Poems -

 

To his Coy mistress The Garden An Horation ode

 

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