“Thus, though we cannot make our sun stand still,
yet we will make him run.”
Andrew Marvell
Andrew Marvell – 1621 to 1678
Andrew Marvell was born in Winestead near Hull, but spent most of his early life growing up in Hull and attended Hull Grammar School in his early years . At the age of 12 years his father the Rev. Andrew Marvell sent him to study at Trinity College, Cambridge.
After his father’s death he left Trinity College apparently without completing his Master’s Degree.
In the 1640’s he travelled widely on the Continent adding Dutch, French, Spanish and Italian to his existing Latin and Greek.
He was a great friend of Milton, who used his influence to get him work as his Latin secretary. Although he had missed the English Civil War whilst travelling Europe, or probably because he had missed it, he got elected to Parliament in 1660.
A well-known and very public politician at the time of great change and a great satirist criticising and mocking the legal system and Parliament, Milton had been imprisoned during the restoration and Marvell used his political influence to get his friend freed, possibly saving his life.
He died suddenly in 1678 and there has been some suggestion that he was poisoned by people he had satirised.
Remembered for defending his country and its way of life, he is now considered one of the seventeenth century’s greatest poets.
There has been a lot of mystery surrounding his life and work making him a source of fascination for his readers and scholars.
Some of Andrew Marvell’s more famous quotes……
‘Had we but world enough and time, this coyness, lady, were no crime. We would sit down, and think which way to walk, and pass our long love’s day’
‘My love is of a birth as rare as ’tis for object strange and high; It was begotten by despair Upon impossibility.’