The Fair Singer
by Andrew Marvell

English poet. His early work had echoes of Cavalier poets like Lovelace and Cleveland, but he is now regarded as one of the best metaphysical poets. His finest poems include The Garden, Upon Appleton House, An Horatian Ode: Upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland. He wrote prose and verse satires which were the best before Dryden's, but are no longer well known. His reputation as a lyric poet is built on To His Coy Mistress, a classic in metaphysical poetry and ranked alongside the best secular poems of John Donne.

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The Fair Singer
by Andrew Marvell

To make a final conquest of all me,
Love did compose so sweet an enemy,
In whom both beauties to my death agree,
Joining themselves in fatal harmony;
That while she with her eyes my heart does bind,
She with her voice might captivate my mind.

I could have fled from one but singly fair:
My disentangled soul itself might save,
Breaking the curled trammels of her hair.
But how should I avoid to be her slave,
When subtle art invisibly can wreathe
My fetters of the very air I breathe?

It had been easy fighting in some plain,
Where victory might hang in equal choice,
But all resistance against her is vain,
Who has th' advantage both of eyes and voice;
And all my forces needs must be undone,
She having gained both the wind and sun.

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The Fair Singer by Andrew Marvell