Introduction

In the first episode of their new Close Readings series on political poetry, Seamus Perry and Mark Ford look at ‘An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland’ by Andrew Marvell, described by Frank Kermode as ‘braced against folly by the power and intelligence that make it possible to think it the greatest political poem in the language’.

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Read the poem here

Further reading in the LRB:

Blair Worden: Double Tongued

Frank Kermode: Hard Labour

David Norbrook: Political Verse

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