Analyzing the poem "An Horatian Ode Upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland" by Andrew Marvell was difficult, because the poem is constantly undermining its own constructions. Also, reading the poem in the Broadview Anthology, one cannot help but glance at the footnotes, to gain further insight into the poem's meaning. However, throughout my analysis I found several authors whose texts contradict those of the Broadview editors, making it difficult to understand the poem surrounding so much contradiction.
[...] In the above lines he writes of nature “allowing,” and “making room.” In lines13-15 he uses lightning to depict Cromwell's overwhelming victory against rival Parliamentary leaders, and again in lines 23-24 to portray Cromwell as a “force of nature” like lightning able to strike even laurel, said to be impervious to lightning. This is also evident in Marvell's use of words like and phrases like “burning through the which he uses to describe Cromwell's impact on his surrounding forces. All of these analogies serve to illustrate Cromwell as a power capable of defeating Charles whose execution Marvell makes reference to in lines 59-64. [...]
[...] The conflicts he sets up help him accomplish this by creating ambiguity and forcing the poem to, as I stated in the outset of this essay, dismantle its own constructions. The device is brilliant, as is the poem, which is what drew me to it in the first place. It really reads like a little story, and one cannot glean from it all that it entails from only one reading. Whether this was a brilliant contrivance on Marvell's part or whether the poem just fell together this way one may never know. [...]
[...] They speak of Cromwell, good he is, how just, / And fit for highest trust:” (ll. 79-80). The footnote for these lines claims that it would have been highly unlikely that the Irish would have praised Cromwell in this manner, and that may be true, but perhaps Marvell was describing less a place he knew, and more a place he saw in his mind, a place where the Cromwell could do no wrong, where he could stomp the Irish and they would still sing his praises. [...]
[...] It is as though Marvell is capturing Cromwell's journey, from the young men putting down their books and scrubbing off the armor, to the execution of Charles to the image of soldiers marching “indefatigably still keeping sword erect.” Marvell is a big fan of the word “indefatigable” when describing Cromwell, the word meaning unstoppable, or unyielding to fatigue (he also uses the word to describe Cromwell in a 1655 poem entitled First Anniversary of the Government under His Highness the Lord Protector”). [...]
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