Artificial Beauty In today’s society it is not a strange sight to see gardens among the common neighborhood. When one thinks to describe a garden words such as beautiful and fresh may come to mind. In Andrew Marvell’s “The Mower Against Gardens” a much different thought is explored. Marvell suggests that there is no such thing as beauty among a garden, that the relationship between man and nature in the form of a garden is manipulative. To back up this thesis, Marvell brings up the artificiality that encompasses gardens through the use of poetic devices including personification, metaphor, and rhyme. Marvell even goes so far as to compare a gardener to that of a brothel owner. The grass is always greener on the other side, especially when it is left to its own devices. Marvell opens the poem with describing man as “luxurious” (Line 1). The connotation and denotation of such a word is quite similar to mean ‘self-indulgent’ at a ‘great expense’. A scene comes to mind that could be compared to that of a zoo as the Mower describes man enclosing the…show more content… The Mower is trying to push the thought that the more artificial creations there are, the less value is placed on true nature. “The fountain and the grot[to]” among the gardens catch the attention of man, “while the sweet fields do lie forgot” (31-32). “Willing nature” simply does and does not need man to till (33). The “innocence” cultivated among nature is “wild” and “fragrant”, seemingly impossible to be manufactured (34). While man tends to its garden, “fauns and fairies do the meadows till,/More by their presence than their skill” (35-36). Just by being allowed to grow wild and free, nature’s presence is enough to tend to itself compared to that of man’s skill to tend the garden. Statues stand among these gardens, of figures of gods themselves that dwell among true nature