from “To His Coy Mistress”

ANDREW MARVELL

Anyone who has read seventeenth-century verse knows Andrew Marvell’s poem “To His Coy Mistress”; anyone who has lived in this ragtag world of sexual longing knows its sentiment: C’mon, baby, let’s get it on. Now no disrespect to Marvin Gaye, but never has the case been better petitioned than by Marvell in his masterpiece. Although most men just whine to their lovers about their robin’s-egg-tinted balls, Marvell, he argues. From the oft-quoted opening lines to the final image of the unstoppable sun, Marvell denies love any eternity or stasis. And because it is true that even the hottest flame must burn in sequential time, any second unseized is lost. This is the conceit of Marvell’s exquisite bauble, which follows in its entirety. I encourage you to memorize some of its lines; we know all too well how often they’ll come in handy.

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love’s day;
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear
Time’s winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv’d virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am’rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp’d power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.