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I need help analyzing this poem by Archibald MacLeish. i need to know what it means?

You, Andrew Marvell

And here face sown beneath the sun
And gere upon earth??s noonward height
To feel the always coming on
The always rising of the night:

To feel creep up the curving east
the early chill of dusk and slow
Upon those under lands the vast
And ever climbing shadow grow

And strange at the trees
Take leaf by leaf the evening strange
The flooding dark about their knees
The mountains over Persia change

And now at Kerman shah the gate
Dark empty and the withered grass
And through the twilight now the late
Few travelers in the westward pass

And deepen on Palmyra??s street
The wheel rut the ruined stone
And Lebanon fade out and crete
high through the clouds and overblown

And over Sicily the air
Still flashing with the landward gulls
And loom and slowly disappear
the sails above the shadowy hulls

And Spain go under and the shore
Of Africa the gilded sand
And evening vanish and no more
The low pale light across that land

Nor now the long light on the sea:

And here face downward in the sun
To feel how swift how secretly
They shadow of the night comes on ??..


Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:

The poem ??You, Andrew Marvell?? should instantly recall memories of Marvel??s famous ??To His Coy Mistress?? with its classic statement on carpe diem. MacLeish??s poem, emphasizes how swiftly time flies by, but, unlike Marvell, seems incapable of celebrating the moment with such knowledge:
The phrase ??the always coming on,?? conveys a sense of impending doom although literally, of course, the poem merely describes the night moving from east to west. It??s probably not entirely accidental, though, that the first city described, Ecbatan, is an ancient Persian city long since vanished. Time, after all, can be measured not only by the day but by the century. It is not a peaceful darkness that encompasses Ecbatan, but, rather, a ??flood?? of darkness that lies about the ??knees?? of the trees.

The night moves on, passing Palmyra, another ancient city in Syria, where there are ??wheel ruts in the ruined stone.?? Finally, this dark force swiftly and secretly ??comes on,?? throwing a long shadow over the narrator. Strangely enough, though, the narrator is lying ??face downward in the sun,?? suggesting that he has already given in to the night long before the night actually arrives. Perhaps that??s appropriate for a series of poems written in the middle of the Depression.
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m...