The Full Text of “Upon Appleton House (Excerpt)”
1
1Within this sober frame expect
2Work of no foreign Architect,
3That unto caves the quarries drew,
4And forests did to pastures hew;
5Who of his great design in pain
6Did for a model vault his brain,
7Whose columns should so high be rais’d
8To arch the brows that on them gaz’d.
2
9Why should of all things man unrul’d
10Such unproportion’d dwellings build?
11The beasts are by their dens exprest,
12And birds contrive an equal nest;
13The low-roof’d tortoises do dwell
14In cases fit of tortoise-shell:
15No creature loves an empty space;
16Their bodies measure out their place.
3
17But he, superfluously spread,
18Demands more room alive than dead;
19And in his hollow palace goes
20Where winds as he themselves may lose.
21What need of all this marble crust
22T’impark the wanton mote of dust,
23That thinks by breadth the world t’unite
24Though the first builders fail’d in height?
4
25But all things are composed here
26Like nature, orderly and near:
27In which we the dimensions find
28Of what more sober age and mind,
29When larger sized men did stoop
30To enter at a narrow loop;
31As practicing, in doors so straight,
32To strain themselves through Heaven’s Gate.
5
33And surely when the after age
34Shall hither come in pilgrimage,
35These sacred places to adore,
36By Vere and Fairfax trod before,
37Men will dispute how their extent
38Within such dwarfish confines went;
39And some will smile at this, as well
40As Romulus his bee-like cell.
6
41Humility alone designs
42Those short but admirable lines,
43By which, ungirt and unconstrain’d,
44Things greater are in less contain’d.
45Let others vainly strive t’immure
46The circle in the quadrature!
47These holy mathematics can
48In ev’ry figure equal man.
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49Yet thus the laden house does sweat,
50And scarce endures the Master great,
51But where he comes the swelling hall
52Stirs, and the square grows spherical;
53More by his magnitude distress’d,
54Than he is by its straightness press’d;
55And too officiously it slights
56That in itself which him delights.
8
57So honour better lowness bears,
58Than that unwonted greatness wears.
59Height with a certain grace does bend,
60But low things clownishly ascend.
61And yet what needs there here excuse,
62Where ev’ry thing does answer use?
63Where neatness nothing can condemn,
64Nor pride invent what to contemn?
The Full Text of “Upon Appleton House (Excerpt)”
1
1Within this sober frame expect
2Work of no foreign Architect,
3That unto caves the quarries drew,
4And forests did to pastures hew;
5Who of his great design in pain
6Did for a model vault his brain,
7Whose columns should so high be rais’d
8To arch the brows that on them gaz’d.
2
9Why should of all things man unrul’d
10Such unproportion’d dwellings build?
11The beasts are by their dens exprest,
12And birds contrive an equal nest;
13The low-roof’d tortoises do dwell
14In cases fit of tortoise-shell:
15No creature loves an empty space;
16Their bodies measure out their place.
3
17But he, superfluously spread,
18Demands more room alive than dead;
19And in his hollow palace goes
20Where winds as he themselves may lose.
21What need of all this marble crust
22T’impark the wanton mote of dust,
23That thinks by breadth the world t’unite
24Though the first builders fail’d in height?
4
25But all things are composed here
26Like nature, orderly and near:
27In which we the dimensions find
28Of what more sober age and mind,
29When larger sized men did stoop
30To enter at a narrow loop;
31As practicing, in doors so straight,
32To strain themselves through Heaven’s Gate.
5
33And surely when the after age
34Shall hither come in pilgrimage,
35These sacred places to adore,
36By Vere and Fairfax trod before,
37Men will dispute how their extent
38Within such dwarfish confines went;
39And some will smile at this, as well
40As Romulus his bee-like cell.
6
41Humility alone designs
42Those short but admirable lines,
43By which, ungirt and unconstrain’d,
44Things greater are in less contain’d.
45Let others vainly strive t’immure
46The circle in the quadrature!
47These holy mathematics can
48In ev’ry figure equal man.
7
49Yet thus the laden house does sweat,
50And scarce endures the Master great,
51But where he comes the swelling hall
52Stirs, and the square grows spherical;
53More by his magnitude distress’d,
54Than he is by its straightness press’d;
55And too officiously it slights
56That in itself which him delights.
8
57So honour better lowness bears,
58Than that unwonted greatness wears.
59Height with a certain grace does bend,
60But low things clownishly ascend.
61And yet what needs there here excuse,
62Where ev’ry thing does answer use?
63Where neatness nothing can condemn,
64Nor pride invent what to contemn?
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“Upon Appleton House (Excerpt)” Introduction
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This guide examines the first eight stanzas of Andrew Marvell's "Upon Appleton House," a classic "country house" poem—that is, a poem in praise of a noble family's house, and by extension, of the family within. Marvell wrote this poem while he himself lived at Appleton House, where he worked as a tutor for the Fairfax family in the early 1650s (though the poem wasn't widely published until it appeared in the posthumous 1681 collection Miscellaneous Poems). The relatively small and unassuming Appleton reflects well on its architect and on the Fairfax family, the speaker feels. Unlike many country houses, Appleton isn't a vast and echoey temple to its owners' egos, but a place as neatly fitted to its inhabitants as a shell to a tortoise. A house that follows nature's modest pattern, these verses suggest, shows that its owner is humble and wise—and thus reveals that owner's inner greatness.
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“Upon Appleton House (Excerpt)” Summary
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Don't expect this solemn building to show off the work of any foreign architect—the kind of designer who would make artificial caves from quarries, cut down forests to make fields, and use the fantastical convolutions of his own brain as a model, building a house with columns so high that those who looked up at them would have to strain and arch their eyebrows.
Why on earth does anyone build such excessive, disproportionate homes? The animals make houses that fit their bodies. Birds build nests that are just their size; tortoises live in low-roofed boxes of tortoiseshell, perfectly suited to them. No animal likes a lot of empty space: their bodies are the measure of their homes.
But a guy who builds an excessively big house is asking for more room than his mortal body really needs. He'll end up wandering through an echoey palace so big that the winds themselves, let alone a person, might get lost in there. What's the point of building all these marble encrustations around the wandering dust speck that is a human being? Big houses are as prideful as the Tower of Babel, only they sprawl outward rather than upward.
Here at Appleton House, though, everything is shaped to nature's plan, neat and elegant. It's the size of a house from more thoughtful, serious times long ago, when tall men had to bend down to get through their small doors—as if they were practicing to get through the narrow gate that leads to Heaven.
Surely, when later generations come to visit the house where the great Vere and Fairfax once lived, visitors will be stunned that such noble people lived in such a tiny place. Some will think it's almost funny—as funny as Romulus, the founder of Rome, living in a little hut, small as a bee's wax cell.
Only a humble designer could have come up with this modest but beautiful house, in which great souls (which can't be contained anyway) can live in a small space. Let other designers foolishly try to square the circle in architecture: this impossible geometrical feat can only be achieved in a person's character, not in the physical world.
Yet, when the master of this house enters its door, the house must strain to contain his greatness. And, what do you know, the architecture of the hall solves the squared-circle problem: the square hall rises into a round dome, making it seem more as if the house is expanding to fit the master than as if the Master were squished into too small a house. But the house doesn't need to worry about being insufficient: its master loves it.
An honorable soul, you see, can enjoy a small house far better than a lowly soul can fill a too-big house. A tall spirit can bend gracefully to fit in a small space, but a little spirit seems foolish when it tries to make itself look bigger. But then, why make any apologies for the size of a house that's so perfectly designed? A house so neat no one could fault it, and so lovely that even the proudest person couldn't criticize it?
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“Upon Appleton House (Excerpt)” Themes
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Grandiosity vs. Humility
"Upon Appleton House" is what's known as a "country house poem," a poem in praise of a wealthy patron's fabulous abode. In the eight-stanza introductory excerpt covered in this guide, Andrew Marvell couches his praise for Appleton House (the home of his employer Lord Fairfax) in what at first might seem odd terms: mostly, his speaker observes that Appleton isn't very big. But Appleton's modest proportions, the speaker goes on, reflect the Fairfax family's enduring good character. The sensible man doesn't try to puff himself up with a house too grand for him, but lets his own fine qualities ennoble his house, instead. A house can reveal a personality, this excerpt suggests, and the family trait Appleton embodies is a wise humility.
Appleton House, the speaker observes, doesn't get above itself. It's not some sprawling palace with columns so high that observers have to "arch [their] brows" to see the tops. In this, it's a more charming and suitable place to live than any manor that "superfluously spread[s]" itself over too much space, as if the owner could show how important he was via the size of his house. Perhaps, the speaker suggests, those who build gigantic houses are a bit insecure: they're trying to give the "wanton mote of dust" that is their own little life more importance than it really has.
Instead, Appleton's modest scale and "sober frame" (or subdued shape) suggest the Fairfax family's wisdom, humility, and quiet self-confidence. Designed on "short but admirable lines," Appleton elegantly fits the people who live in it, suggesting that they don't need to overcompensate with marble halls and vaulted galleries. The house may be small, but it's neat and close-fitting as a tortoise's shell, with everything in its right place: no one could "contemn" (or look contemptuously on) it for a lack of "neatness," and everything it contains "does answer use" (that is, perfectly serves its purpose). Its exquisite, shipshape smallness reveals the Fairfaxes' good taste, wise humility, and self-assurance.
In fact, Appleton's very humility only shows off the Fairfaxes' inner greatness to better effect. Later visitors, the speaker flatteringly says, will one day make "pilgrimage[s]" to Appleton in honor of the people who lived there, and they'll marvel that such great souls could fit into such a little house. Far from diminishing the family, then, little Appleton works like the setting for a jewel, its unobtrusive humility both reflecting and highlighting the Fairfaxes' best qualities.
- See where this theme is active in the poem.
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The Elegance of Nature
Appleton House, this poem of praise suggests, is charming because it wisely follows the order of nature. Just as a nest is only big enough for a bird and its nestlings, Appleton House is just the right size for a human being. It respects the land it rests in, too: rather than reshaping the landscape around it to some harebrained design, Appleton fits neatly and quietly into its surroundings. Nature, in this poem, teaches people all they needs to know about grace, style, and modesty.
Appleton's architect, the speaker suggests, was wise enough to look to the natural world when he planned the house's shape and scale. For, just as "birds contrive an equal nest" (that is, they build nests just big enough to fit them) and tortoises live in "cases fit of tortoise-shell" (shells exactly their size), people should live in houses without a lot of superfluous "empty space." The cavernous rooms of a "hollow palace," in the speaker’s opinion, are unnatural; in nature, all is "orderly and near," not excessive and grandiose.
What's more, the house's grounds respect the landscape. Rather than transforming "quarries" into artificially picturesque "caves" and hacking down forests to turn them into quainter "pastures," the architect who designed Appleton fit the house into the world around it, making it a harmonious part of its northern English terrain. (This respect for the landscape also shows Appleton to be a particularly English place: no suspicious "foreign Architect" has imposed some unnaturally French vision on the grounds.)
By following in nature's footsteps, Appleton House thus both expresses and respects nature's elegance—a choice that the speaker implies other country-house architects should take better note of.
- See where this theme is active in the poem.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Upon Appleton House (Excerpt)”
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Lines 1-4
Within this sober frame expect
Work of no foreign Architect,
That unto caves the quarries drew,
And forests did to pastures hew;"Upon Appleton House" is what's known as a "country house poem," a poem praising a noble family's stately home. Such poems were often written in honor of a poet's patron: pay a poet, and they just might be so grateful that they'd write you a poem about how fabulous your house was (and, by extension, how fabulous you were).
This flavor of poem came into its own in early 17th-century England through the work of writers like Emelia Lanier and Ben Jonson. Andrew Marvell wrote "Upon Appleton House" in the early 1650s, though, some years later—and by then, England and its nobility had been through some trying times.
Marvell moved to Appleton to work as a tutor for the young Maria Fairfax. Maria was the only child of Lord Thomas Fairfax and his wife Anne de Vere, a family that played a major part in the English Civil War (of which you can find a brief overview in the Context section of this guide):
- Both Fairfax and de Vere came from famous military families and had brave and warlike temperaments themselves. Thomas Fairfax was a famous Parliamentarian general; Anne, a noted heckler.
- Though Fairfax fought alongside Oliver Cromwell, he was appalled by Cromwell's determination to execute King Charles I and largely withdrew from public life in the wake of that earthshaking beheading.
- With the war over and Cromwell installed as Lord Protector of the country, the Fairfaxes thus retired to Appleton, their country home in Yorkshire, to live as quiet a life as possible.
The poem that Andrew Marvell would write about Appleton would thus end up being about much more than the house's charms and the Fairfaxes' benevolence. Over the course of this long poem, Marvell transforms Appleton into a cultural, political, and even spiritual ideal: a place where "Right" triumphs over hidebound and false "Religion" and humanity humbly learns from nature. In short, the Appleton of this poem becomes a bastion of goodness and order, a retreat from a damaged and fallen world that is, as the speaker says at the end of the poem, "not what it once was."
This guide will examine the poem’s eight opening stanzas, in which the poem's speaker begins a kind of guided tour of Appleton, praising what he feels might be the house’s greatest virtue: its humility.
In these first lines, the speaker introduces Appleton by describing what it isn't: alien and artificial. "No foreign Architect" could have designed this place, the speaker declares. If he had, he would certainly not have given the house its "sober frame," its modest and unassuming shape.
A suspicious foreign architect would also have made his mark on the grounds. Rather than leaving the stone "quarries" from which the house's walls were mined as they are, he'd have sculpted them into picturesque "caves"; rather than preserving the "forests" that surround the estate, he'd have chopped them down to make artificial "pastures."
One of Appleton's first virtues, then, is that it doesn't lie. Rather than imposing some kind of fanciful (and suspiciously Continental) ideal on the landscape, trying to make Yorkshire look like a dream of ancient Greece, Appleton sits quietly and naturally in its surroundings.
Such modesty, the first lines suggest, is praiseworthily British. Let some decadent Frenchman build a pretentious, artificial house, the speaker seems to say; the steady English Fairfax family knows better than to impose its own petty daydreams on nature. For nature, this poem will suggest, is the wisest designer—or nature's designer is.
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Lines 5-8
Who of his great design in pain
Did for a model vault his brain,
Whose columns should so high be rais’d
To arch the brows that on them gaz’d. -
Lines 9-16
Why should of all things man unrul’d
Such unproportion’d dwellings build?
The beasts are by their dens exprest,
And birds contrive an equal nest;
The low-roof’d tortoises do dwell
In cases fit of tortoise-shell:
No creature loves an empty space;
Their bodies measure out their place. -
Lines 17-24
But he, superfluously spread,
Demands more room alive than dead;
And in his hollow palace goes
Where winds as he themselves may lose.
What need of all this marble crust
T’impark the wanton mote of dust,
That thinks by breadth the world t’unite
Though the first builders fail’d in height? -
Lines 25-32
But all things are composed here
Like nature, orderly and near:
In which we the dimensions find
Of what more sober age and mind,
When larger sized men did stoop
To enter at a narrow loop;
As practicing, in doors so straight,
To strain themselves through Heaven’s Gate. -
Lines 33-40
And surely when the after age
Shall hither come in pilgrimage,
These sacred places to adore,
By Vere and Fairfax trod before,
Men will dispute how their extent
Within such dwarfish confines went;
And some will smile at this, as well
As Romulus his bee-like cell. -
Lines 41-48
Humility alone designs
Those short but admirable lines,
By which, ungirt and unconstrain’d,
Things greater are in less contain’d.
Let others vainly strive t’immure
The circle in the quadrature!
These holy mathematics can
In ev’ry figure equal man. -
Lines 49-56
Yet thus the laden house does sweat,
And scarce endures the Master great,
But where he comes the swelling hall
Stirs, and the square grows spherical;
More by his magnitude distress’d,
Than he is by its straightness press’d;
And too officiously it slights
That in itself which him delights. -
Lines 57-64
So honour better lowness bears,
Than that unwonted greatness wears.
Height with a certain grace does bend,
But low things clownishly ascend.
And yet what needs there here excuse,
Where ev’ry thing does answer use?
Where neatness nothing can condemn,
Nor pride invent what to contemn?
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“Upon Appleton House (Excerpt)” Symbols
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Appleton House
Appleton House plays a complex symbolic role in this poem. It represents the Fairfax family themselves, the family's virtues, and a more general ideal of elegance, virtue, and wisdom.
For a stately home, Appleton isn't particularly big or particularly grand. But that, the poem's speaker argues, is precisely what makes it so lovely. Fitting into its surroundings rather than imposing itself on them, matching its inhabitants as neatly as a shell matches a tortoise, Appleton embodies a wise modesty that the speaker wishes were more readily found in the world.
In this, Appleton also becomes the mirror and the symbol of the Fairfax family who live in it. Like Appleton, the Fairfaxes are modest and humble; like Appleton, their very humility is part of what makes them so great.
- See where this symbol appears in the poem.
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“Upon Appleton House (Excerpt)” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Analogy
Drawing a witty analogy between people and the animal kingdom, the speaker neatly makes the point that huge, echoey houses are outright unnatural.
Exasperated by the thought of those "foreign Architect[s]" who build absurdly grand houses, the speaker asks why humanity is the only living creature that decides it needs a bunch of empty space around it. By contrast:
The beasts are by their dens exprest,
And birds contrive an equal nest;
The low-roof'd tortoises do dwell
In cases fit of tortoise-shell:Every beast and bird, in other words, makes itself a home that fits as closely as a comfy sweater. The image of tortoises wearing "cases fit of tortoise-shell," in particular, calls up the idea of design and intention. By presenting the shell as a made-to-measure "case," or box, the speaker suggests that the tortoise (or its creator, at least) shows exquisite taste. (The metaphor also winks at humanity's use of nature: elegant tortoiseshell boxes are not always found on the backs of the tortoises those shells belonged to.)
"No creature loves an empty space," the speaker concludes; "their bodies measure out their place." By analogy, human beings should be contented with a house on a human scale—perhaps not so tight as a tortoise's shell, but certainly modest. For people are creatures too, the speaker suggests, and they have much to learn from the natural world.
- See where this poetic device appears in the poem.
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Metaphor
- See where this poetic device appears in the poem.
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Imagery
- See where this poetic device appears in the poem.
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Allusion
- See where this poetic device appears in the poem.
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"Upon Appleton House (Excerpt)" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Sober frame
- Unto caves the quarries drew
- Forests did to pastures hew
- Did for a model vault his brain
- Unrul'd
- Unproportion'd
- Exprest
- Contrive
- Fit
- Superfluously
- T'impark
- Wanton
- The first builders
- Loop
- Straight
- Hither come in pilgrimage
- Vere and Fairfax
- Dispute
- Dwarfish confines
- Romulus
- Ungirt
- T'immure
- The circle in the quadrature
- Scarce
- The square grows spherical
- By its straightness press'd
- Too officiously
- Unwonted
- Ev’ry thing does answer use
- What
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Stern, sensible shape.
- See where this vocabulary word appears in the poem.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Upon Appleton House (Excerpt)”
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Form
"Upon Appleton House" is written in steady octaves (or eight-line stanzas), each built from four rhymed couplets. This guide is focusing on only the first eight stanzas here, but the poem goes on for a very long time: all told, it’s 97 stanzas long.
This combination of neat, tight stanzas—"like nature, orderly and near"—and grand scale suits the speaker's praise of Appleton House and of the Fairfax family. Appleton and the Fairfaxes, the poem will suggest, are both modest and noble. The house's unassuming dimensions form a humble backdrop for the family's long and storied history.
After the passage we examine here, the speaker slips into tour-guide mode, pointing out the many lovely sights in the house and its grounds and describing the history that made Appleton great—including a dramatic incident in which an earlier Lord Fairfax rescued (or abducted, according to one's point of view) his bride, young Isabella Thwaites, from a convent of scheming nuns. The poem closes with a section in praise of Maria, the Fairfax family's only child, sole heir, and brightest hope.
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Meter
"Upon Appleton House" is written in iambic tetrameter. That means that each line is built from four iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm. Here's how that sounds in the first lines of stanza 8:
So hon- | our bet- | ter low- | ness bears,
Than that | unwont- | ed great- | ness wears.This stately, regular rhythm makes the poem feel as sturdy as Appleton House's foundations.
Of course, this long, long poem doesn't plod along in perfect iambs the whole way through. Occasional variations lighten and enliven the meter. Listen to what happens in the next line of stanza 8, for instance;
Height with | a cer- | tain grace | does bend,
The meter here bends as gracefully as the noble souls the line describes: the first foot is a trochee, the opposite of an iamb, with a DUM-da rhythm.
Notice, too, that this poem uses an old-fashioned pronunciation of words that end in -ed: "composed," for instance, is pronounced with three syllables, com-POSE-ed. Where the poet doesn't want that extra syllable pronounced, he'll use a contraction: "rais'd," "unrul'd," "unconstrain'd."
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Rhyme Scheme
Each octave (or eight-line stanza) of "Upon Appleton House" uses four rhymed couplets, like so:
AABBCCDD
This rhyme scheme make the speaker’s voice feel light, quick, and sharp. The orderly couplets reflect an orderly mind: this is a speaker who values economy, humility, and wit over grandiose elegance. The neat rhymes also echo what the speaker has to say about nature's wisdom and elegance: just as a bird matches its nest or a tortoise matches its shell, the lines match each other.
An occasional slant rhyme—like "unrul'd" and "build" in lines 9-10—keeps the rhyme scheme from sounding monotonous, adding a little musical variation. Note, though, that some rhymes that might sound slant to a modern reader (such as "age" and "pilgrimage" in lines 33-34) were probably perfect in Marvell's 17th-century English accent.
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“Upon Appleton House (Excerpt)” Speaker
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The poem’s speaker is a cross between a philosopher, a historian, and a tour guide. Over the course of the poem, this speaker sings the praises of Appleton House itself and of the Fairfax family, telling tales from the history of both. In these introductory verses, though, the speaker is mostly laying out a philosophy of architecture, interleaved with some tasteful flattery. Appleton House's modest dimensions, the speaker argues, make a fitting and elegant backdrop for a family that's great of soul.
Readers could reasonably interpret the speaker here as Marvell himself. This is, after all, a poem of admiration and gratitude written for the family that employed him. Marvell worked at Appleton House as a tutor for the Fairfaxes' only child and heir, Maria—a young woman whose beauty, intelligence, and promise the speaker will lavishly praise at the end of this long poem.
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“Upon Appleton House (Excerpt)” Setting
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Readers may not be surprised to discover that "Upon Appleton House" is set in and around Appleton House, the Fairfax family's country estate in Yorkshire. The speaker makes much of how tastefully modest this house is. However, it’s still a country house, a large and noble dwelling with a stately pedigree. Much of the poem will be taken up in loving descriptions of the house's grounds and history.
In these lines, the speaker is particularly taken with the way that Appleton House fits into its surroundings, following nature's lead. The house itself, he observes, is just the right size for the family that lives in it, as suited to the Fairfaxes as a shell is to its tortoise.
This idea of nature (and nature's divine "architect") as the best and wisest designer will inform much of the rest of the poem. The house's lovely gardens, the speaker will claim, both mirror and nurture human virtue—in particular, the virtue of the lovely and intelligent Maria Fairfax, the family's only child and sole heir.
Later in the poem, the speaker will also suggest that the house's beautiful grounds carry echoes of its history, summoning up recent memories of the English Civil War, as well as earlier echoes of the Elizabethan era (during which the Fairfax and Vere families did distinguished military service) and Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries in the 16th century (through which the Fairfaxes gained their estate). Through it all, the speaker says, Appleton has been a beacon of virtue, standing proudly against false religion and corrupt governance.
More than that, though, Appleton and its grounds will become an image of a very English Eden, a place a little bit less spoiled than the chaotic world around it.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Upon Appleton House (Excerpt)”
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Literary Context
Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) was a famously elusive writer. In his political commitments and his poetry alike, he never stuck to one tradition or another.
For instance, Marvell's famous "To His Coy Mistress" is one of the greatest examples of a carpe diem poem (that is, a poem in which a speaker tries to convince a lady to sleep with him)—a form for which the Cavalier poets were famous. But unlike Cavalier contemporaries such as Richard Lovelace, Marvell didn't root his love poetry in loyalty to the British monarchy (and the aristocratic, pleasure-loving lifestyle that went along with it). Rather, he had Parliamentary sympathies, albeit flexible ones: he was quick to conform to the government of Oliver Cromwell after King Charles I's overthrow and quick to become a monarchist when King Charles II returned from exile and resumed the throne.
Marvell wrote "Upon Appleton House" around 1651, right after the end of the wars, when he was employed by the Fairfax family as a tutor for their daughter Maria. The poem, like most country house poems (that is, poems written in praise of a patron's stately home) was never intended for wide publication. "Upon Appleton House" was meant as a private tribute to Marvell's employers, in which Marvell suggested that the Fairfaxes' wisdom and goodness made Appleton a sane, humble, beautiful retreat from a corrupt and dangerous world.
The poem was nevertheless published posthumously in 1681, when a woman who claimed to be Marvell's wife (but was probably his hard-up housekeeper) printed an assortment of his manuscripts in the hopes of collecting some royalties. Since then, "Upon Appleton House" has become the most famous of country house poems. It also shows the marks of the cerebral Metaphysical tradition of poets like John Donne and George Herbert: when the speaker delves into Appleton's grounds, he finds in them a very Metaphysical conceit (or elaborate extended metaphor) for a well-ordered mind.
Historical Context
Andrew Marvell made his clever, adaptable way through one of the most dramatic episodes in English history: the English Civil War. In this earthshaking conflict, the Parliamentarians (or Roundheads, so named for a characteristic bowl-cut hairdo), led by Oliver Cromwell, rose up against the Cavaliers, forces loyal to King Charles I and to the monarchy in general:
- Cromwell's Roundheads wanted increased parliamentary power as a curb on kingly tyranny.
- Charles's Cavaliers believed in the "divine right of kings," the idea that kings and queens were appointed by God and should exercise power accordingly.
This clash came to a dramatic climax in 1649 when Cromwell's forces tried, convicted, and beheaded Charles I for treason. This execution was a huge shock to the country and the world; Britain would never be the same. And Cromwell's stand against tyranny would start to look ironic when he began to exercise dictatorial power in his role as "Lord Protector." His authority and popularity soon waned, and England invited Charles I's exiled son Charles II back to the throne in 1660, ushering in an era of courtly luxury, elegance, and wit.
Thomas Fairfax, the owner of Appleton House and Marvell's employer, was a famous general in the Parliamentarian army, and he played a major part in Cromwell’s victory. But he was appalled when Cromwell moved to execute King Charles I as a traitor and refused to take part in this plan. (His wife Anne also got in trouble for heckling the court that convened to try the king.)
The Fairfaxes thus inhabited an in-between place in the Civil War, neither Royalists nor full-throated Parliamentarians. In this, they resembled Marvell himself, who navigated a dangerous time by swearing his allegiance to whichever side happened to be dominant at the moment. This was a tricky strategy, one that he pulled off through brilliance, usefulness, and fast-talking.
If Marvell held deeper political convictions than his actions suggest, they're hard to trace in his poetry. Though the tone and subject matter of his work often make him sound a lot like a Cavalier poet, he wrote verse in praise of Cromwell, too. What's more, he was close friends with the more actively anti-monarchical John Milton, whom he rescued from prison after Charles II resumed the throne.
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More “Upon Appleton House (Excerpt)” Resources
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External Resources
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More Upon Appleton House — Learn about the afterlife (and decline) of Appleton House.
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A Brief Biography — Learn more about Marvell's life and work via the Poetry Foundation.
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Marvell's Legacy — Learn more about Marvell's enduring influence in this review of a recent biography.
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Portraits of Marvell — See images of Marvell himself (with skeptical expression and fabulous hair) via London's National Portrait Gallery.
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More on Marvell — Visit the British Library's website to learn more about Marvell's life and times, and to see images of some of his manuscripts.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Andrew Marvell
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