See with what simplicity
\nThis nymph begins her golden days!
\nIn the green grass she loves to lie<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It\u2019s impossible to pin down what makes the first three lines of Marvell\u2019s \u2018The Picture of Little T. C. in a Prospect of Flowers\u2019 such a magical fusion of tenderness, delicacy and radiant energy. It\u2019s something to do with the degree<\/em> to which different beauties of the writing breathe life into each other.<\/p>\n One such beauty is the sheer lightness and sophisticated simplicity of the poet\u2019s metrical, phonetic and syntactical fingering. Sounds and rhythmic contours melt into or swell out of each other smoothly, and the metre is handled in a way that gives a clear impact to tiny shifts of metrical weight. Such sensitivity in the writing creates a heightened receptiveness in the reader. I myself, and I\u2019m sure I\u2019m not alone in this, find my imagination playing delightedly around every syllable and the spaces between them, picking up multiple suggestions whose life is in their movement, the way they twine round each other without crystallising into fixity.<\/p>\n For example, in the third line two iambic feet, each consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one, are replaced by a single ionic foot: two unstressed syllables followed by two stressed one \u2013\u2018in the green grass\u2019. \u00a0The emphasis of GREEN GRASS is reinforced by double alliteration. Why bother to mention, let alone emphasize that the grass is green? Well, green and gold come together repeatedly in Marvell, always with a mysteriously reverential and lovely effect. There\u2019s something additional here, though. To an adult the greenness of the grass may seem obvious. By emphasising it, Marvell suggests the delight of the child\u2019s world of perpetual discovery where nothing is taken for granted. In that way it\u2019s like a more delicate version of Ted Hughes\u2019 poem \u2018The Full Moon and Little Frieda\u2019.<\/p>\n However, Marvell doesn\u2019t hammer his point home as Hughes does. He\u2019s no sooner hinted at it than he shifts attention away from it. The way the paired alliterating stresses of \u2018green grass\u2019 are balanced by the paired alliterating stresses of \u2018loves to lie\u2019 gives a purely musical pleasure that moves us on from focusing in too isolating a way on the idea of the child\u2019s innocence. But this musical pleasure isn\u2019t separated from the wider life of the line either. The alliteration gives forceful expression to the child\u2019s joy and draws us into it as we say the phrase. And like the bold opening command \u2013 \u2018See\u2019 \u2013 it\u2019s one of the things that gives the lines what I called their radiant energy. But this energy is of an essentially gentle kind, befitting the tenderness of the poet\u2019s regard.<\/p>\n