1. The Mower’s Song by Andrew Marvell
“The natural world is often used to construct ideas about love.”
Unseen poetry ‘Compare and contrast the presentation of love in the following poems in the light of this comment’.

2. Starter – listen to Roberta Flack’s version of The First Time I Saw Your Face
What is similar between this song and John Clare’s poem? I listened to this on Saturday on radio 4 and it was really interesting. Love this song.

3. Last lesson:
Close reading of John Clare’s early Victorian , late Romantic poem ‘First Love’
Identifying key quotes plus Ao2/3 inference
Looked at the ‘deconstructed essay plan’ – 6 paragraphs . Introduction, two main paragraphs on each poem, conclusion
What we arrived at:
Section 1: love shown positively through nature imagery in stanza one
Section 2: love shown as damaging and disorientating in the rest of the poem – arriving at a realisation of the loss of innocence experienced by love
This lesson:
Close reading of The Mower’s Song (written nearly two hundred years earlier) to then identify presentation of love in stanza one , then presentation of love in the rest of the poem. Plan links between the two poems.

4. A pastoral poem – type of ‘escape literature’ – about shepherds and country folk in an idealised existence of love and song. (A02/3/4)
Published in 1681 posthumously (written before 1653?)
The pastoral mode has classical roots (Ancient Greece) but there was a revival in the Renaissance / 17th century – a desire to think of love in a more innocent time
Critics have said that Marvell bridges the gap between early 17th century poetry (innocent and idealised) and the Restoration (desire & lustful) calling him, rather cheekily, “ a libidinous puritan”
Restoration writers clearly rejected and even ridiculed the pastoral impulse, and it would more than a century before the ideals of the pastoral, again transformed, would again respectability in the works of Romantic writers.
Terms you may find useful: ‘bucolic’ meaning idealised rural life – “pastoral poetry presents a bucolic scene” . And ‘arcadian’ meaning idyllically rustic .

5. Stanza one – lines 1-4
Obvious but just to check understanding: a mower cuts grass for hay and tends the countryside
How does Marvell present ideas about love through positive nature imagery?
What tense is it written in? Effect of this?
What rhyme scheme and its effect?
Are there any sound effects?

6. Stanza one lines 5-6 – a refrain repeated at the end of all five stanzas (sestets)
How is the mower interrupted in his honest work in the garden?
By who?
What is she doing to him? How is she being cruel?
Think about what you know about the Garden of Eden – what kind of love might this poem about?
What kind of ‘mowing’ do you think Juliana ‘does to my thoughts and to me’. Does she seduce him ( mowing = renaissance term of sex) or does she cut him down and reject his advances after stirring his desire? (is there evidence of her intentions?)
What is interesting about the syntax of the final two lines? What does it emphasise?

7. Stanzas 2-5 – who does the poem directly address now?
Stanza 2 – what happens to the garden while he is distracted from his mowing and feeling depressed?
Stanza 3 – what events happens in the garden and why do these offend him?
Stanza 4 – the ‘unthankful meadows’ continue to grow, lush and fertile whilst he is not mowing them, which he sees as ruinous but he says that his revenge will be to ruin ‘flow’rs, and grass, and I and all / will in one common ruin fall’ which echoes the New Testament: ‘Adam’s fall is nature’s fall’ (Romans 8:22) What metaphysical idea (abstract concept) is he trying to express using the imagery of a wild garden ?
What has died for him? The meadows used to accompany his thoughts ‘more green’ – green possibly meaning naïve – so why is he not naïve anymore? What has he lost forever? John Clare had lost something at the end of his poem – how similarly or different?

8. Marvell’s intention
A significant proportion of Marvell's poetry is pastoral; here, Marvell uses the pastoral convention in a most original way to ask fundamental questions about the Fall of Humankind, human passions, and the possibility of (re)gaining lost innocence within Nature.
If this is true, the poem seems to echo the values of one of the 17th century’s most popular movements: puritanism . This may seem ironic given what we know about the lustful sentiment in ‘To His Coy Mistress’. Some critics did regard Coy Mistress as a satire (thus mocking such liberal attitudes to sex), others have interpreted it as sincerely promoting pre-marital sex because it is written against the backdrop of a bloody civil war where carpe diem attitude would be more understandable.
Critics have said that Marvell bridges the gap between early 17th century poetry and the Restoration (innocent, idealised love versus ideas of desire) calling him rather cheekily “ a libidinous puritan” – he was a Christian.
Restoration writers clearly rejected and even ridiculed the pastoral impulse, and it would more than a century before the ideals of the pastoral, again transformed, would again respectability in the works of Romantic writers.

9. Links between the first stanzas in both poems?

10. Links between the rest of the poems?

11. Next lesson will be a timed write (with detailed plan) an opportunity to apply knowledge, skills and exam technique to time.
Homework for next lesson – to consolidate your understanding of both poems/ devices/ context / links so that you can write confidently.

12. Love across the ages through art – wider reading
about-love-in-pictures
My top three: Rodin, Vermeer, Rauschenberg. Which are yours?