How to Do Things with Political Poetry

What is the purpose of political poetry? Does poetry merely reflect political events, or can it actually effect political change? In this curation are four very different approaches to political poetry written during the English Civil Wars, meant to set off and highlight the different poles between which Pulter’s “Invitation into the Country” so deftly moves. Richard Lovelace’s poem “The Snail” is perhaps the best example of one extreme, in which the poet responds to political defeat with images of retreat and closed circles, fantasizing about curling up within oneself.

Richard Lovelace, The Snail

Wise emblem of our politic world,
Sage snail, within thine own self curl’d;
Instruct me softly to make haste,
Whilst these my feet go slowly fast.

Compendious snail! thou seem’st to me,
Large Euclid’s strict epitome;
And in each diagram dost fling
Thee from the point unto the ring;
A figure now triangular,
An oval now, and now a square;
And then a serpentine dost crawl,
Now a straight line, now crook’d, now all.

Preventing rival of the day,
Th’art up and openest thy ray,
And ere the morn cradles the moon
Th’art broke into a beauteous noon.
Then when the sun sups in the deep,
Thy silver horns ere Cynthia’s peep;
And thou from thine own liquid bed
New Phoebus heav’st thy pleasant head.

Who shall a name for thee create,
Deep riddle of mysterious state?
Bold Nature that gives common birth
To all products of seas and earth,
Of thee, as earthquakes, is afraid,
Nor will thy dire deliv’ry aid.

Thou thine own daughter then, and sire,
That son and mother art entire,
That big still with thy self dost go,
And liv’st an aged embryo;
That like the cubs of India,
Thou from thyself a while dost play;
But frighted with a dog or gun,
In thine own belly thou dost run,
And as thy house was thine own womb,
So thine own womb concludes thy tomb.

But now I must (analyz’d king)
Thy economic virtues sing;
Thou great stay’d husband still within,
Thou, thee, that’s thine dost discipline;
And when thou art to progress bent,
Thou mov’st thy self and tenement,
As warlike Scythians travell’d, you
Remove your men and city too;
Then after a sad dearth and rain,
Thou scatterest thy silver train;
And when the trees grow nak’d and old,
Thou clothest them with cloth of gold,
Which from thy bowels thou dost spin,
And draw from the rich mines within.

Now hast thou chang’d thee saint; and made
Thy self a fane that’s cupola’d;
And in thy wreathed cloister thou
Walkest thine own grey friar too;
Strict, and lock’d up, th’art hood all o’er,
And ne’er eliminat’st thy door.
On salads thou dost feed severe,
And ’stead of beads thou dropp’st a tear;
And when to rest, each calls the bell,
Thou sleep’st within thy marble cell,
Where in dark contemplation plac’d,
The sweets of nature thou dost taste;
Who now with time thy days resolve,
And in a jelly thee dissolve,
Like a shot star, which doth repair
Upward, and rarify the air.

Richard Lovelace, “The Snail.” Luminarium.org.

If Lovelace’s poem admires the closed circle of the snail, Alexander Brome’s poem “The Royalist,” which he precisely dates to 1646 (a year before Pulter’s “Invitation into the Country, … 1647”) valorizes a circle of imprisoned carousers. They are closed in and closed off, but resolved nevertheless to “tipple” their cares away, supposedly as a form of political rebellion (“In vain they’l think their plagues are spent, / When once they see we don’t repine”; ll. 15–16).

Alexander Brome
The Royalist. Written in 1646

1.
Come, pass about the bowl to me,
A health to our distressed King;
Though we’re in hold, let cups go free,
Birds in a cage may freely sing.
The ground does tipple healths apace,
When storms do fall, and shall not we;
A sorrow dares not shew its face,
When we are ships and sack’s the sea.

2.
Pox on this grief, hang wealth, let’s sing,
Shall’s kill our selves for fear of death?
We’l live by th’air which songs doth bring,
Our sighing does but wast our breath:
Then let us not be discontent,
Nor drink a glass the less of Wine;
In vain they’l think their plagues are spent,
When once they see we don’t repine.

3.
We do not sugger here alone,
Though we are beggar’d, so’s the King;
’Tis sin t’have wealth, then he has none,
Tush! poverty’s a Royal thing!
When we are larded well with drink,
Our heads shall turn as round as theirs,
Our feet shall rise, our bodies sink
Clean down the wind, like Cavaliers.

4.
Fill this unnatural quart with sack;
Nature all vacuums doth decline,
Our selves will be a Zodiack,
And every mouth shall be a sign.
Me thinks the Travels of the glass,
Are circular like Plato’s year,
Where every thing is as it was;
Let’s tipple round; and so ’tis here.

Alexander Brome, “The Royalist. Written in 1646,”, Songs and other poems by Alex. Brome Gent. (London, 1664). Early English Books Online. [Italics and initial capitals regularized.]

Andrew Marvell’s poem “The Garden” is less insouciant than Brome’s “The Royalist,” but it also fantasizes about escape and withdrawal, particularly, like Pulter’s poem, withdrawal into the country. Such a retreat into nature, the poem imagines, may allow him to transcend worldly troubles, converting potentially political impulses instead to “a green thought in a green shade” (ll. 47–48).

Andrew Marvell, The Garden

How vainly men themselves amaze
To win the palm, the oak, or bays;
And their uncessant labors see
Crowned from some single herb or tree,
Whose short and narrow-vergèd shade
Does prudently their toils upbraid;
While all the flowers and trees do close
To weave the garlands of repose.

Fair Quiet, have I found thee here,
And Innocence, thy sister dear!
Mistaken long, I sought you then
In busy companies of men:
Your sacred plants, if here below,
Only among the plants will grow;
Society is all but rude,
To this delicious solitude.

No white nor red was ever seen
So amorous as this lovely green;
Fond lovers, cruel as their flame,
Cut in these trees their mistress’ name.
Little, alas, they know or heed,
How far these beauties hers exceed!
Fair trees! wheresoe’er your barks I wound
No name shall but your own be found.

When we have run our passion’s heat,
Love hither makes his best retreat:
The gods who mortal beauty chase,
Still in a tree did end their race.
Apollo hunted Daphne so,
Only that she might laurel grow,
And Pan did after Syrinx speed,
Not as a nymph, but for a reed.

What wondrous life is this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons as I pass,
Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass.

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.

Here at the fountain’s sliding foot,
Or at some fruit-tree’s mossy root,
Casting the body’s vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide:
There like a bird it sits and sings,
Then whets and combs its silver wings;
And, till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.

Such was that happy garden-state,
While man there walked without a mate:
After a place so pure and sweet,
What other help could yet be meet!
But ’twas beyond a mortal’s share
To wander solitary there:
Two paradises ’twere in one
To live in Paradise alone.

How well the skillful gard’ner drew
Of flowers and herbs this dial new;
Where from above the milder sun
Does through a fragrant zodiac run;
And, as it works, th’industrious bee
Computes its time as well as we.
How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckoned but with herbs and flowers!

Andrew Marvell, “The Garden.” Luminarium.org.

Compare, then, these poetic visions of escape and transcendance to the following call to action called “The Digger’s Song.” The Diggers were an agrarian communist group advocating for the common use of common land (see the Encyclopedia Britannica). Their song below is a chant and call to action; less beautifully crafted and emotionally stirring, perhaps, than the samples of Royalist poetry given above, it is nevertheless potentially stirring in other ways, and the penultimate stanza contains an explicit dig at Cavaliers or Royalists, whose verse serves only, they say, “to please the singing boyes” (l. 54).

The Digger’s Song

You noble Diggers all, stand up now, stand up now,
You noble Diggers all, stand up now,
The wast land to maintain, seeing Cavaliers by name
Your digging does disdaine, and persons all defame
Stand up now, stand up now.

Your houses they pull down, stand up now, stand up now,
Your houses they pull down, stand up now.
Your houses they pull down to fright poor men in town,
But the gentry must come down, and the poor shall wear the crown.
Stand up now, Diggers all.

With spades and hoes and plowes, stand up now, stand up now,
With spades and hoes and plowes stand up now,
Your freedom to uphold, seeing Cavaliers are bold
To kill you if they could, and rights from you to hold.
Stand up now, Diggers all.

Theire self-will is theire law, stand up now, stand up now,
Theire self-will is theire law, stand up now.
Since tyranny came in they count it now no sin
To make a gaole a gin, to sterve poor men therein.
Stand up now, stand up now.

The gentrye are all round, stand up now, stand up now,
The gentrye are all round, stand up now.
The gentrye are all round, on each side they are found,
Theire wisdom’s so profound, to cheat us of our ground.
Stand up now, stand up now.

The lawyers they conjoyne, stand up now, stand up now,
The lawyers they conjoyne, stand up now,
To arrest you they advise, such fury they devise,
The devill in them lies and hath blinded both their eyes.
Stand up now, stand up now.

The clergy they come in, stand up now, stand up now,
The clergy they come in, stand up now.
The clergy they come in, and say it is a sin
That we should now begin, our freedom for to win.
Stand up now, Diggers all.

The tithe they yet will have, stand up now, stand up now,
The tithes they yet will have, stand up now.
The tithes they yet will have, and lawyers their fees crave,
And this they say is brave, to make the poor their slave.
Stand up now, Diggers all.

’Gainst lawyers and gainst Priests, stand up now, stand up now,
Gainst lawyers and gainst priests stand up now.
For tyrants they are both even flatt against their oath,
To grant us they are loath, free meat, and drink, and cloth
Stand up now, Diggers all.

The club is all their law, stand up now, stand up now,
The club is all their law, stand up now.
The club is all their law to keep men in awe,
But they no vision saw to maintain such a law.
Stand up now, Diggers all.

The Cavaleers are foes, stand up now, stand up now,
The Cavaleers are foes, stand up now;
The Cavaleers are foes, themselves they do disclose
By verses not in prose to please the singing boyes
Stand up now, Diggers all.

To conquer them by love, come in now, come in now,
To conquer them by love, come in now;
To conquer them by love, as itt does you behove,
For hee is King above, noe power is like to love.
Glory heere Diggers all.

[The Diggers Song.] In Sir William Clarke, The Clarke Papers. Selections from the Papers of William Clarke, Secretary to the Council of the Army, 1647–1649, and to General Monck and the Commanders of the Army in Scotland, 1651–1660, ed. C.H. Firth (Camden Society, 1894), 4 vols: vol. 2, pages 221–224. Online Library of Literature.