“The Garden” – Andrew Marvell

As a lifetime gardener, I can’t help but admire Marvell’s “The Garden,” with its metaphorical twists and turns reflecting on themes of human vainglory, nature’s gifts of calm meditative repose, and Biblical references. My introduction to the poem was at a project meeting when it was read by a landscape architect describing a garden design. My favorite part of the poem is in the sixth stanza.

The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find,
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas;
Annihilating all that’s made
To a green thought in a green shade. 

 Yes to annihilating all this world’s strivings, trials, and even joys into a green thought in a green shade. Yes to getting back mentally and physically to our home in the natural world!

Jerry Lang