Happiness may be humankind’s most mysterious desire. What, after all, is happiness? Is it fulfilled by simply meeting our needs: food, shelter, companionship, and security? Perhaps the difficulties in finding happiness lie not so much in whether these desires are fulfilled, but in whether there’s hope that they will be and in how we can best achieve this hope.
‘Bermudas’
Where the remote Bermudas ride In th’ ocean’s bosom unespy’d, From a small boat, that row’d along, The list’ning winds receiv’d this song.
What should we do but sing his praise That led us through the wat’ry mazeUnto an isle so long unknown, And yet far kinder than our own? Where he the huge sea-monsters wracks, That lift the deep upon their backs, He lands us on a grassy stage, Safe from the storm’s and prelates’ rage. He gave us this eternal spring Which here enamels everything, And sends the fowls to us in care, On daily visits through the air. He hangs in shades the orange bright, Like golden lamps in a green night; And does in the pomegranates close Jewels more rich than Ormus shows. He makes the figs our mouths to meet And throws the melons at our feet, But apples plants of such a price, No tree could ever bear them twice. With cedars, chosen by his hand, From Lebanon, he stores the land, And makes the hollow seas that roar Proclaim the ambergris on shore. He cast (of which we rather boast) The Gospel’s pearl upon our coast, And in these rocks for us did frame A temple, where to sound his name. Oh let our voice his praise exalt, Till it arrive at heaven’s vault; Which thence (perhaps) rebounding, may Echo beyond the Mexic Bay.
Thus sung they in the English boat An holy and a cheerful note, And all the way, to guide their chime, With falling oars they kept the time.
Desire and Abundance
A first reading overwhelms one with all the things that Bermuda has in abundance; it seems made to suit man’s needs. There isn’t just food, but plentiful and delicious food, from exotic fruit such as pomegranates and figs and pineapples; there isn’t just wood, but the kind of wood that’s worthy of being used for Solomon’s temple, built with cedar. In exchange for the fog and cold in England, visitors find an eternal spring that makes everything shine. There are even exotic materials for trade such as the expensive perfume fixative, ambergris.
Above all, here there’s freedom: freedom from the fear of nature, freedom from the fear of men, and freedom to worship God. This last freedom is emphasized at the beginning and ending of the second and longest stanza, from “sing his praise” through “safe from the storm’s and prelate’s rage” to “Gospel’s pearl” and “temple, where to sound his name.”
However beautiful and desirable these images are, however, they would be merely tantalizing if not that they’re, in fact, attainable. Not only are these what men desire, but there’s a real opportunity to achieve them. This opportunity is both a gift and a reward. It’s a gift, as the rowers proclaim throughout the poem: God has set down, almost with careless largess, all this bounty. He has led them “through the watery maze.”
But it isn’t only a gift. First, these men have had to trust in God. For another, they’ve had to be brave enough to risk the caprice of the sea. As the opening lines suggest, they’ve committed themselves to a long journey (“remote Bermudas”), attempted by few in their “small boat,” to a little-known place. They aren’t seen or “espied” because Bermuda is so far from the concerns of the many or the powerful. True, the calling was God’s, but the answering was theirs.
Finally, man’s needs aren’t to be pursued frantically or desperately, but rather with song and steady work, “chiming” and rowing, with patience and cheer. One can have desire and assurance that one can get what one desires, but one needs something more: the attitude here and now that sustains one while pursuing hope.
The Hopeful Meet Reality
From a historical perspective, there may be gentle irony in this poem. While the rowers are never precisely identified as Puritans, certain things give the impression that they are so: The rowers are fleeing the rage of prelates, after all. Also, Marvell had friendships and sympathies with such non-conformists. Finally, modern scholarship on the poem indicates that describing the Puritan’s journey was Marvell’s intention.
These being the case, it’s very strange that an English boat is being rowed to Bermuda, where religious refugees had no stable sanctuary and where the mirage of abundant natural wealth quickly gave way to the reality that the archipelago consisted only of about 21 square miles. It was first settled in 1612 by the English, some of whom, indeed, had fled persecution by the established Church in England. However, little more than 30 years later, the Puritan (or at any rate nonconformist) emigres felt the need to leave again during the tumult caused by the English Civil Wars. It must have seemed very bitter, to have come into paradise, established oneself and one’s family there, and then be forced to leave again.
Yet these same pilgrims would have seen this as just a slightly more transient example of the bitter transplantation awaiting everyone: death. We’re bound to seek out perfection in this world while realizing that we'll only really find it in the next.
In the end, Marvell is echoing a Christian sentiment that anyone, Christian and non-Christian alike, can take something from: The remote Bermudas are always riding just ahead of us, no matter where we are, and our duty is to keep rowing forward and rowing with a song.
