Chapter Sample Questions of The Collected Poems - Study Guide by Andrew Marvell

protected due to the fact that it is an island and the sea acts as a protector (an idea also considered in Shakespeare’s Richard II and present in Exodus when the Red Sea protects the Children of Israel).

Marvell can never fully escape because society and politics will always impinge on a landscape – more keen to see it as a retreat where he is able to examine himself as illustrated in "Bermudas" where the island is seen as a reward for those who have toiled to get there. Marvell "resolves the conflict in the poet’s own mind between the attractions of evading reality in communion with Nature and the necessity of coming to terms with the world’ (Hill).