Monumentally and Nature - a Look Via the Works of Marvell, Marlowe, Raleigh, and Lanyer

One of the most prevalent subjects in pastoral and country life poetry is nature. Rightfully so, it represents an open environment, free of restriction. Generally in pastoral poems, we see a shepherd beckoning to his love interest, attempting to sway her into a life of flower smelling, fishing, and sleeping in nature. Country house and garden poetry, on the other hand, speaks of bringing nature to the viewer. While both exist with this romantic idea of experiencing nature, the way each handles the matter is important: the pastoral handles nature as a monument, while the country house and garden poetry handles nature as an object. However, in the works of Andrew Marvell (an English gardens poet), we see a somewhat cynical tone illustrating the effect on nature. As if to further criticize courtly life, we see an attempt by Marvell and other poets of the time to realign humans with nature - to reestablish the monumentality of nature as the being that holds humanity.

Christopher Marlowe's poem The Passionate Shepherd to His Love is a typical pastoral: it has strong visual imagery of the country, affection, and an "escape with me to nature" message. We see in the following two stanzas Marlowe's attempt to sway his love :

And I will make thee beds of roses,
And a thousand fragrant poesies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle,
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle. (lines 9-12)
A belt of straw, and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs,
Aid if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love. (Ll. 17-20)

We see in the first stanza that the shepherd is offering his love a bed of roses and clothing made from flowers. As romantic as this may seem, it is still very shallow - the only promise the shepherd can give is material. Even in swearing his love in the May of their lives, he only offers that which can be taken from nature and bent into a "human" usefulness: clothes, belt clasps, a bed, etc. In Sir Walter Raleigh's The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd, we get a response directed at Marlowe and his misjudgment of nature. The nymph, a wood spirit - in this case, the voice of nature - replies: Thy belt of straw and ivy buds/ Thy coral clasps and amber studs/ All these in me no means can move. (Ll. 17-19) The nymph rejects the shepherd's proposal of love because he is speaking in terms of materiality - a direct reference to the objectification of nature, and on a slighter level, courtly life. She, however, goes on to say:

But could youth last, and love still breed
Had joys no date, nor age no need,
Then these delights my mind might move,
To live with the, and be thy love. (Ll. 21-24)

We see the nymph desires immorality and eternal love: two things that exist beyond the control of the shepherd. She is asking him, instead of presenting gifts, to realize that nature sets boundaries that cannot be broken. Assuming the voice of nature itself, Raleigh is criticizing the idea that love and life should be based on objects when everything clearly adheres to the rules of nature; the monumentality exists in these rules and boundaries. Nature resides over everything, and to assume otherwise - or, in the case of the poem, to promise otherwise - is foolish.

Aemilia Lanyer, in her poem The Description of Cookham, describes a contrary and different kind of experience related to nature. The narrator has a religious experience in the admiration of her favorite tree. We are presented with symbols and scenes which seem to revolve around the tree (and the grounds themselves): With Christ and his apostles there to talk; placing his holy writ in some fair tree. We see that there is a strong allusion to the human experience, religion, but there is a recognition of nature that allows for it to invoke these scenes. Lanyer suggests in this that nature has the ability to conjure a sublime experience, which supports the monumentality. However, as the story continues, we understand that this natural flourishing relies on the presence of Cookham's mistress. After the religious slideshow is over, the reader is told that the mistress is leaving Cookham, and we see the effects: the trees wept, the fruit and flowers lost their color, and "...everything retained a sad dismay." We're given the idea that for nature to exist fruitfully, a human presence is required; almost to say, humans are responsible for beauty in nature. This is very contrary to the monumentality, suggesting that humans bring with them the beauty in nature. The poem seems to suggest that beauty is the object that humans desire from nature, which is quite an opposite stance to Raleigh and to a lesser degree, Marlowe. This idea continues into the works of Marvell under a strong, critical tone.

In The Mower Against Gardens, we are already aware of Marvell's stance from the title alone. We are first described the creation process of an English garden:
Where nature was most plain and pure,
He first enclosed a within the garden's square
A dead and standing pool of air.
And a more luscious earth for them did knead.
Which stupefied them while it fed. (lines 4-8)

We see in the description that Marvell calls the now enclosed area a "dead and standing pool of air," suggesting that the area is contained enough so that even the air has died. The suggestion that placing nature in a container (thus, objectifying it) is harmful is first raised here. Given the idea that the gardeners were stupefied by the enclosure, we see the monumentality is still present but degrading. Marvell continues on, suggesting that the gardeners are breeding plants to create new and exotic things that are clearly not natural: Had he not dealt between the bark and tree, forbidden mixtures there to see (lines 21-22). These new, hybrid plants are described by Marvell as eunuchs - that is, they can't reproduce. This trait shows that those plants are incapable of surviving, and since they only exist because of human intervention, they are unnatural. The idea of the exotic garden clearly shows the attempt by owners of gardens to create a spectacle of nature. This unnaturalness is punished by sterility: man can make the exotic, but the exotic cannot produce the exotic. Marvell is suggesting that beauty is nature's realm, and any of man's attempts to objectify or alter it are futile. Truly, if the gardeners were after beauty, they must merely find it, but we see suggested in Marvell's The Garden that beautiful gardens are merely status symbols - a definite sign of the court.

From the opening lines of The Garden, we see a stout, cynical attitude towards the gardeners: How vainly men themselves amaze/ To win the palm, the oak, or bays (lines 1-2). With The Mower Against Gardens set in this same context, the cynical tone is more clear: the hybrid plants are the product of men's egos, trying to impress each other. By creating objects of nature that are exotic, the man's reputation is bolstered. But, like in the fatalistic sayings of Raleigh and the nymph, the exotic will die along with its maker, and the "forbidden mixtures" will go unknown for another period of time. One characteristic of men's egos that is always prevalent when it comes to the unique and exotic is selfishness - it is unlikely that, once created, the hybrid's lineage was revealed. We can assume that it is cynicism on nature's part, relying on the shortcomings of man to protect itself and its sanctity - to reestablish itself as the keeper and the monument.

Marvell, in a single stanza, sums up the human experience in relation to nature:
Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less,
Withdraws into its happiness:
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. (lines 41-48)

We see the narrator describing how he withdrew into happiness. This could be a sign of the sublimity of nature taking over, or it could be self-referential on the poet's part, suggesting his own feelings while in nature. We see the reference to the mind, alluding to humans; yet, in the fifth line of the stanza, Marvell refers to "it." He is, in a sense, establishing that nature - the it - is far reaching and to credit for creating "other worlds and other seas." The idea that nature is responsible for all creation is the core idea of its monumentality: it created all, it cradles all, it provides the boundaries for all. Marvell continues to say that nature has the ability to annihilate everything, returning it to pure nature. This is could be an allusion to natural disaster or simply life and death. The afterlife, as suggested here, is simply oneness with nature - the green thought in a green shade.

Whether to establish a human context in terms of nature, or to criticize courtly life, Marvell and the other poets mentioned show one thing: nature is the reason why we exist. Each poet's work (with, perhaps, the exception of Lanyer) establishes an unnatural attitude towards the courtly life, adopting a fatal standpoint. They try to appeal to the court (in the only manner possible: the arts) to establish that the material decays. Humans cannot create nature and humans cannot escape the boundaries of nature. Each will die and nourish the earth, and what he owned in life will not matter. The call of the artists was simply one of recognition: while humans may be the greatest creation of nature, we are still a creation of nature, and we still bend to nature.