Literary Analysis Of Damon The Mower

To be Affected or Reflected - that is the Natural Difference

In "Damon the Mower" Andrew Marvell portrays an imaginary world of his own. He creates this personal world with the use of his personal experience as a mower that spends much of his time being very close to Nature. In addition, with the use of delicate imagery, and the cryptic conceits, Marvell shows in this poem his general affinity to the work of John Donne. Even though, in "Damon the Mower" Marvell 's ingenuity of imagery and conceits can be quite tedious, from the reader 's view, as Harold Bloom cites Alice Meynell in his book Bloom 's Classic Critical Views: John Milton and the Metaphysical Poets. On the other hand, in "Twickenham Garden", Donne also succeeds to portray a

In the last three stanzas, we can notice Marvell 's unique ability to use conceits, as the speaker explains in lines 77-8, that Damon wound his ankle in a moment of carelessness. This conceit compares between the mower to the grass he cuts, hence, at this point, the speaker strengthens the connection he had made earlier between the mower to Nature. In addition, in line 80 the speaker uses a magnificent alliteration with the words "Mower mown" to illustrate Damon 's great pain. Later, in the last stanza, the speaker ends the poem in a lamenting tone by using a conceit to compare between the mower to the angel of death. In the poem Marvell demonstrates his abound poetic devices: from the use of two voices, through the tight rhyming scheme, the intricate use of conceits, and finally the tone playing, all weaved together masterfully to convey the exact desired notion. However, Meynell claims that: "The reader treads with 'maze ' most resolutely intricate […] obliged to turn back having been to much puzzled […] on the way of to a small, visible, plain and obvious goal of thought." Thence, as we have already realized "Damon the Mower" requires constant reader 's decryption, so it would become comprehensible. For all these reasons, it is obvious that Marvell stands in the first row of the metaphysical school of poetry; he has a close observation of Nature, he uses literary conceit, and he knows how to exploit the poetic devices to his benefit. Nevertheless, although he stands in the first row together with the great poets of his time, he lacks Donne 's unique ability to express emotions as it is illustrated in