Climbing a Tree
Going Up: "The Garden" starts off steady—lots of branches mean that the climb is fairly regular, just like the meter and rhyme of the poem. Marvell isn't heavy on things like alliteration or consonance, either, so our progress isn't getting bogged down by lots of leaves and poetic devices. And notice how none of Marvell's lines seem to run into each other but they all end in perfect, usually one-syllable rhymes? That's because there is no enjambment in this poem, and there isn't any choppy phrasing, or thoughts that end in the middle of the line, either. The first half of "The Garden" is just strong, succinct lines of poetry (like line 1: " How vainly men themselves amaze"), leading straight up to…
The Top: "What won'drous life is this I lead!" Precisely at the beginning of the fifth octave, you have reached the top and man, oh man is the view fan-freaking-tastic. The volta at the beginning of stanza 5 marks a change in tone and sound. We go from critical language—"vain," "uncessant," "mistaken," and the like—to words of exaltation like "won'drous" and "Paradise." We also get more poetic devices, like the consonance of the P sounds and the assonance of the short U in: "Ripe apples drop about my head; / The luscious clusters of the vine" (34-35). This change in mood is so drastic, it's almost a little overwhelming, kind of like the first glimpse of a spectacular landscape seen from somewhere high in the sky.
The Descent: Things start to get a bit tricky on the way down. All the branches you used on the way up—the meter, the form, the rhyme scheme—are still there, but as the content gets more muddled, the climb down gets a little trickier and it takes a little bit longer to figure out where you're headed. We start to encounter slant rhymes like "foot" and "root," and the number of multi-syllable words increases. Marvell also starts to use commas a little more generously. Lines that contain multiple phrases, like "Meanwhile the mind, from pleasures less," become more common, as opposed to in the first half of the poem, where almost all the lines are single, succinct phrases. Also gone are the exclamations of wonder and beauty that we saw back in stanza 5. Nature is still being praised, but all the talk of the mind, the soul, and "longer flights" really mellows out the tone of the poem until eventually you find yourself firmly back to reality and down on the ground.
Who knew sound techniques could take you on such a trip?