You, Archibald MacLeish

You, Andrew Marvell  

And here face down beneath the sun   

And here upon earth’s noonward height   

To feel the always coming on

The always rising of the night:

To feel creep up the curving east   

The earthy chill of dusk and slow   

Upon those under lands the vast   

And ever climbing shadow grow

And strange at Ecbatan the trees   

Take leaf by leaf the evening strange   

The flooding dark about their knees   

The mountains over Persia change

And now at Kermanshah the gate   

Dark empty and the withered grass   

And through the twilight now the late   

Few travelers in the westward pass

And Baghdad darken and the bridge   

Across the silent river gone

And through Arabia the edge

Of evening widen and steal on

And deepen on Palmyra’s street

The wheel rut in the ruined stone   

And Lebanon fade out and Crete

High through the clouds and overblown

And over Sicily the air

Still flashing with the landward gulls   

And loom and slowly disappear   

The sails above the shadowy hulls

And Spain go under and the shore   

Of Africa the gilded sand

And evening vanish and no more   

The low pale light across that land

Nor now the long light on the sea:

And here face downward in the sun   

To feel how swift how secretly

The shadow of the night comes on ...   

                  Archibald MacLeish's poem title You, Andrew Marvell refers to Andrew Marvell, seventeenth century poet, one of whose best-known poems is a carpe diem lyric entitled To His Coy Mistress, which contain a memorable line "But at my back I always hear/ Time's winged chariot hurrying near". In his poem, Marvell reminds his audience of life's brevity and the prospect of inevitable, impending death, as he urges his audience to seize the day and make the most of every seconds.

                  On the literal level of the poem You, Andrew Marvell describes, with geographical exactitude, the uninterrupted, unhurried, silent progress of the night fall, or in his own words, " the always rising of the night." And the symbolism plays a major part in this poem. The oncoming of the night associates with the inevitability of  death conventionally, and " Earth's noonward height" refers to the peak of manhood.  His selection of the city and country and even the oceanic names recalls the history of mankind rather than just a progress of the night fall that invites us to contemplate the meaning of time and life. Carpe diem.