The single red Camellia trying to get in through the window
I’m just going to concentrate on a few verses of ‘The Garden’ by Andrew Marvell. You’ll find the whole poem here. I found it in the Oxford Book of English Verse. Like many famous English poems, I read it as an undergraduate at University. But those readings often went over my head – or perhaps heart? I don’t think I’ve ever read it since.
The Garden
To weave the garlands of repose.
I have no idea what’s happening in this opening stanza!
I’m going too fast here and in a kind of reading panic because it’s a famous poem and I don’t understand it. What do we do when we don’t get it? We read it again, more slowly, a little bit at a time. I take a breath and start again, going for the first chunk of meaning;
As I read it aloud I realise ‘single’ is a clue here. There’s one kind of thing (lines 1-6) which is to do with ‘single’ and then there’s another kind of thing (lines 7&8) which is to do with ‘all’.
When I’m trying to read I often have to do without knowing and so sketch out a murky unclear area I don’t yet understand and just leave it there. I often think of that space as ‘x’, as if reading was a bit like math equations, and you have to accept there are lots of parts you don’t know. You mark them as unknowns and then try to work out other bits. Eventually ‘y’ may reveal ‘x’.
But I do now know that these opening lines are about the difference between ‘single’ and ‘all’. It’s about taking notice of a the entirety of a garden rather than some special plant, is it?
While all flow’rs and all trees do close
To weave the garlands of repose.
But also the difference between ‘uncessant labours’ and ‘repose’. The ‘single/all’ split has made me notice another, which is the difference between ‘uncessant labours crowned’ and ‘garlands of repose’. And now I notice the difference between ‘crowns’ and ‘garlands’.
Hmm.I’m taking it at face value, but now it strikes me that this poem may not be about a garden. It’s the word ‘vainly’ that makes me think it’s bigger than that. Can’t do anything with that thought yet. People strive to win ‘the palm, the oak, or bays.’ They are plants that are signify winning. Winners get a crown of bays, and those bays are cut from trees. Bays in particular are often clipped and manicured, as the trees here seem to be;
Whose short and narrow verged shade
Does prudently their toils upbraid;
I think this is a poem against a life of clipping bays. Don’t clip and contain natural energy – go with the flow.
readerjanedavis 
Can’t wait. Loving this daily read.
Thank you! It’s certainly doing me some good.
The Garden
How vainly men themselves amaze
To win the palm, the oak, or bays,
And their uncessant labours see
Crown’d from some single herb or tree,
Whose short and narrow verged shade
Does prudently their toils upbraid;
While all flow’rs and all trees do close
To weave the garlands of repose.
Hi Jane,
I enjoyed reading your post. I’m a great fan of close reading …there’s a lot going on here. For (my ) starters though, the semi-colon interests me. It separates the hard syllable ‘d’ at the end of ‘shade’ ( now I think about where ‘shade’ ends!!!?)from the softness of ‘W’ in while. Maybe this contrast links in with thoughts of pruning and reaping ; cutting back, in order to replenish and re-establish . The harsh versus the new born softness, like spring I suppose.
I can see another possible contrast too in the apparent anonymity of ‘some single herb’ (line 4) and the more universal ‘all’, ‘all flow’rs and all trees do close’
(line 7). Additionally (line 4), I wonder if we, although when we read the words, think of one ‘single herb or tree’ yet, there is no comma following the word ‘herb’, are we to take it that we are thinking of a ‘single herb or [single] tree’ ?
Barb
For ‘shade’ re ‘upbraid’ apologies.