The Complete Poems

Perhaps the most accessible English lyric poet of the seventeenth century, Marvell was also a master of political satire. Passionate and brilliant, witty and learned, this astute man of affairs combined the friendship of Milton with the patronage of Cromwell and the admiration of Charles II.

The wittiest and yet most accessible writing in mid-seventeeth-century England, Andrew Marvell's poetry is both passionate and brillant, erotic and comic, cool courtly and seductive.The wittiest and yet most accessible writing in mid-seventeeth-century England, Andrew Marvell's poetry is both passionate and brillant, erotic and comic, cool courtly and seductive. The friend. admirer and supporter of Milton, Marvell was also a very great poet in his own right. Described by a contemporary as 'of middling stature, pretty strong-set, of roundish face, cherry-cheeked, hazel-eyed, brown-haired he was a man of the people and a brillant intellectual. The fact that he was both a republican and the admired favourite of Charles II indicates the breadth of his sympathies.