The Poems and Some Satires of Andrew Marvell: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Poems and Some Satires of Andrew Marvell, credited to Andrew Marvell, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of The Poems and Some Satires of Andrew Marvell by Andrew Marvell. Read in English by LibriVox Volunteers. Andrew Marvell is a man of many faces, in both poetry and politics. A master of the pastoral dialogue, he can equally well fire out a Juvenalian satire; congratulate the new republic while also applauding the murdered king’s fortitude; and balance a solemn platitude against a ribald joke within the space of two lines. This constitutional habit of seeing two sides of the same issue owes much to Ben Jonson’s influence although the younger poet uses this talent to create irony like Donne’s rather than for the appearance of frank honesty as in Jonson. In “The Garden” he is as at home with sensory luxury as Herrick, but his paradoxes and metaphysical conceits, in “The Definition of Love,” rival Donne’s. One may suspect that the couplet form, especially in the satires, encourages this doubleness, for where the rhymes are muted it is not found, as in the straight pathos of the “The Nymph’s Complaining for the Death of Her Fawn,” enjambment obscuring rhymes by tending to make phrases end in the middle of lines rather than at line-end. In the Satires, Marvell shifts from arch sneering to savage excoriation, and then to rollicking triple-rhythm burlesque. It seems at times that he must certainly be added to someone’s hit list, but his insults are so brazen and he appears to have so much fun in making scandalous accusations that he appears to enjoy the immunity of a court jester. (Summary by Thomas A. Copeland)

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Poems and Some Satires of Andrew Marvell
• Author credits: Andrew Marvell
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 16
• Listed recording duration: 7:35:34

Catalogue topics

• metaphysical
• seventeenth century

Track guide

1. 00 - Introduction and Biographical Note — 50:10
2. 01 - Poems: Upon Appleton House — 43:39
3. 02 - Poems: Upon the Hill and Grove at Billborow etc. — 50:20
4. 03 - Poems: Eyes and Tears etc. — 46:48
5. 04 - Poems: First Anniversary of the Government — 28:46
6. 05 - Poems: A Poem upon the Death of His late Highness the Lord Protector etc. — 32:55
7. 06 - Satires: Flecknoe, an English Priest at Rome — 11:02
8. 07 - Satires: Tom May's Death, The Character of Holland — 18:47
9. 08 - Satires: Last Instructions to a Painter about the Dutch Wars — 58:02
10. 09 - Satires: To The King and The Loyal Scot — 22:52
11. 10 - Satires: Clarendon's House-Warming — 8:40
12. 11 - Satires: Upon his House, Epigram upon his Grandchildren and Farther Instructions to a Painter — 5:47
13. 12 - Satires: On Blood’s Stealing the Crown, Royal Resolutions, An Historical Poem — 24:14
14. 13 - Satires: Advice to a Painter to Draw the Duke of York etc. — 24:42
15. 14 - Satires: A Poem on the Statue in Stocks-Market, The Statue at Charing Cross, A Dialogue between Two Horses — 22:26
16. 15 - Latin and Greek Poems — 6:24

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This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.