The Fair Singer

This is the archive for Jewelry Poetry on the Beadshaper web site. To see the Beadshaper site, please click Beadshaper .

The Poetry Piece for the month of March is a bracelet named for the poem, the Fair Singer by Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)


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 eye 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,
Whose subtle art invisibly can wreath
My fetters of the very air I breath?

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