Metaphysical Imagery

If you're studying metaphysics, you are primarily concerned with things that exist outside the realm of perceivable reality—things that people think are out there even though we can't physically see them. We're talking about things like the soul and the mind, and phenomena like human existence. These have been favorite topics of poets for centuries, but the non-material, potentially non-existent status of a lot of metaphysical subject matter makes them fairly hard to tackle. We mean, if someone asked you to describe a soul, how would you do it? Where would you even begin? For the Metaphysical Poets, the answer seems to lie in the use of imagery. In "The Garden," for example, Marvell uses metaphors, similes, and other images to describe metaphysical concepts, thus making intangible things seem more approachable and comprehensible to his average reader. A thorough understanding of these passages is pretty essential if you're going to understand how the imagery functions, so if you're still a little confused, hop on up to our "Detailed Summary" section, where we unpack each line, piece by piece. If you've got the metaphorical meaning of these lines down pat, then have at it! 

• The Ocean, Lines 43-46: By comparing the mind to the ocean, Marvell is able to take a complicated, philosophical thought (the difference between images absorbed by the mind from real life and images created by the mind) and translate it into terms someone in the late 1600s would understand. The ocean theory was in vogue at the time, so people would have known what Marvell was getting at without him having to dive too deeply into philosophy-speak. 
• The Bird, Lines 51-56: The garden, it seems, is a super-relaxing place for our speaker—so relaxing, in fact, that the speaker's soul can get naked (exit the body) and run around. The point of comparing the soul to the bird, however, emphasizes the fact that this is just one step in a long process of preparation. These brief moments where the soul escapes the body are practice for the much longer separation between soul and body, a.k.a. death. Just as birds need to rest, preen, and prepare their wings for a long migration, so the speaker believes that the soul needs time to prepare before the Grim Reaper comes a-knockin'.
• The Sundial, Lines 65-70: We've got all sorts of imagery going on here. We have God as gardener, garden as sundial, and bees as people. The comparison goes something like this: God made time, and people keep track of time to know how much longer they have left in the world. The gardener plants flowers, and the bees use the cycle of life and death in nature to guide their actions and measure out their remaining hours.
• By comparing human life to the short-lived bloom of flowers in a garden, Marvell emphasizes just how brief our existence on this planet is. Relatively speaking, our lives are no more significant or enduring than the lives of insects and our lifespans no lengthier than an English summer.