“A Dialogue Between the Soul and Body” (A Poem)

Published in Miscellaneous Poems in 1681, Andrew Marvell’s “A Dialogue Between the Soul and Body” builds on the medieval literary tradition and imagines a heated conversation between the human body and soul.[1] Throughout the course of the poem, the soul complains about its mortal confines and hungers to be set free and wander the cosmos. In response, the body whines about the soul’s flighty nature and bemoans the illnesses it causes – fear, hatred, joy, hope, love, and sorrow – which cannot be cured by the same balms and salves as other earthly diseases.

SOUL
O who shall, from this dungeon, raise
A soul enslaved so many ways?
With bolts of bones, that fettered stands
In feet, and manacled in hands.
Here blinded with an eye; and there
Deaf with the drumming of an ear.
A soul hung up, as ’twere, in chains
Of nerves, and arteries, and veins.
Tortured, besides each other part,
In a vain head, and double heart.

BODY
O who shall me deliver whole,
From bonds of this tyrannic soul?
Which, stretched upright, impales me so,
That mine own precipice I go;
And warms and moves this needless frame:
(A fever could but do the same.)
And, wanting where its spite to try,
Has made me live to let me die.
A body that could never rest,
Since this ill spirit it possessed.

SOUL
What magic could me thus confine
Within another’s grief to pine?
Where whatsoever it complain,
I feel, that cannot feel, the pain.
And all my care itself employs,
That to preserve, which me destroys;
Constrained not only to endure
Diseases, but, what’s worse, the cure:
And ready oft the port to gain,
Am shipwrecked into health again.

BODY
But physic yet could never reach
The maladies thou me dost teach;
Whom first the cramp of hope does tear:
And then the palsy shakes of fear.
The pestilence of love does heat:
Or hatred’s hidden ulcer eat.
Joy’s cheerful madness does perplex:
Or sorrow’s other madness vex.
Which knowledge forces me to know:
And memory will not forego.
What but a soul could have the wit
To build me up for sin so fit?
So architects do square and hew,
Green trees that in the forest grew.[2]

Works Referenced

Marvell, Andrew. “A Dialogue Between the Soul and Body.” Selected Poems. Ed. Bill Hutchings. London: Routledge, 2002. 29-30.

Ray, Robert. An Andrew Marvell Companion. London: Routledge, 1998. 
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[1] Ray, 58-61.
[2] Marvell, 29-30.