SOURCE: "Against Polarization: Literature and Politics in Marvell's Cromwell Poems," in English Literary Renaissance, Vol. 5, Spring, 1975, pp. 251-72.

In the following excerpt, Patterson argues that it is only by considering all of his Cromwell poems that we can understand Marvell's changing perceptions of Cromwell.

Despite the steady accumulation of commentary on Marvell's poems, the First Anniversary of the Government under O.C. has attracted little attention. Still less attention has been given to the elegy, Upon the Death of O.C. While critics return frequently to consideration of the techniques and insights of the Horatian Ode, The Garden, and Upon Appleton House, it is apparently acceptable to publish a full-length study of Marvell's poetry without a section on either of the later Cromwell poems.¹ Literary judgment has not proceeded much beyond Legouis' original discouragement;² and when the formidable political contexts of the poems have been mastered, as they...