Abstract
This poem is Marvell’s one Epode. Its pattern of iambic couplets had been used twice by Ben Jonson; the Londoner in him was praising life in the country each time. In The Forrest (1616) he used it for his Epode ‘To Sir Robert Wroth’, a title which went on in the manuscript ‘in praise of a Country life’. In The Under-Wood (1640) he used it again for his translation of the Second Epode of Horace and this time they printed the title ‘The praises of a Countrie life’. His translation began:
Happie is he, that from all Businesse cleere
As the old race of Mankind were
With his owne Oxen tills his Sire’s left lands
And is not in the Usurers bands.
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© 1979 Michael Craze
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Craze, M. (1979). The Mower against Gardens. In: The Life and Lyrics of Andrew Marvell. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-04588-4_18
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-04588-4_18
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-04590-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-04588-4
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