To his Coy Mistress

by Andrew Marvell

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.

Sunday, August 21, 2011

To His Coy Mistress

I’ve read some condemnations of this poem by some really angry women.  They especially hate the second stanza, with it’s nasty grave worm=penis imagery and  it’s “Say anything to get you in bed” attitude.   But whether his arguments are offensive depends on the relationship between Marvell and the woman.  She might be laughing the whole time. That scenario would make it a better poem.


                 I know lovers who jokingly call each other names,  criticize each other, threaten each other and even use WWE wrestling moves on each other, all the while giggling and smooching.  I used to see this kind of thing in the commons at Arrowhead High School nearly every day.  Read this poem as if a lusty guy were saying it to his nearly-as-lusty girl on their tenth date.  Imagine she’s entertained by his arguments, but generally replies “Whatever,” because she’s a good girl, she is.

“Coy” means hesitant or shy in a flirty way. A mistress is just a girlfriend, not a woman cheating on her spouse.  Think of it as the feminine of master.  She’s the mistress of his heart.

She won’t give it up, and he’s trying to instill a sense of urgency into the moment.  He says life is short.  She’s worth waiting for, but waiting could result in missed opportunity.

During the Renaissance, Europeans considered India an exotic, opulent, sensuous place.  Rubies and cinnamon and curry come from there. And,  think of Bollywood films... The women are sexy!


Poets used to sit and sigh and write their “Lover’s Complaints” by the Humber River.  A poem about unrequited love was called a complaint.


Here’s a clue that he’s joking: “...refuse till the conversion of the Jews” is a silly statement with a goofy rhyme.


He calls his passion “vegetable love,’ meaning it would grow slowly, but, of course, every class I’ve been in wonders if he’s bragging about his parsnip.

Okay, a guy says to his girl, “I wish I had 200 years to check out this breast, and another 200 for that one.  How can that not be a joke?  Seeing as he seems to be moving downward from her face to her bosom to her privates, the “thirty thousand” boast is really absurd.  There’s not enough Viagra in the world!


Then after he has performed his detailed inspection of her fine self, he says he’ll get around to her heart.  “So, let’s make out for 30,300 years and then I’ll tell you whether I love you?”  Either she’s laughing or she’s walking at this point.  Maybe both.

Here’s a nastier version of the old “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may” argument.  Think of time as death.  He’s in a chariot and when he catches up to us he will swing his big old scythe and we’ll be reaped! Eternity is a vast desert because we don’t get to be fertile, read that as make love,  after we die.

This might be disgusting, but, again, it might be funny, depending on the kind of girl he says it to.  Elvira, the Mistress of the Dark, might find it thrilling.  Yes, worms trying a girl’s virginity is an image from a Freudian nightmare.  Even worse, “quaint” has a double meaning here.  It works fine as “old-fashioned” but in Middle English, “queinte” was a vulgar term for a girl’s privates.  Still, the last line is certainly a macabre joke.  People look for fine, private places to make out. Well, graves are certainly private, but by the time we get there it’s too late to embrace.  The “I think” in the last line sounds like the speaker is being a wise guy.  There’s a scene in “Return of the Living Dead” in which a girl is trying to seduce a guy in a grave yard.  They both get eaten by zombies before they get to consummate their lust. See! You’ve got to get it while you can!

Notice the change in tone.  Now he says she’s as beautiful and youthful as a morning, but as eager and passionate as a fire.  This isn’t ironic.  It’s maybe a little hopeful, maybe a little bit of projection, imagining she’s as lusty as he, but it’s not goofy.

Big tactical switch!  He starts talking about “we” and “us.”  He says, “Let’s be love-falcons, swooping down on and swallowing whole this opportunity.”  Who wouldn’t want to be a falcon! This is so smart.  He’s saying to the girl, “It’s about the team, not just you or me.”

When I was a kid in the city, my friends and I would either hop fences or squeeze through gates if the fences  had barbed-wire tops or were way high.  So this image of rolling up your stuff and yanking it through a gate just reminds me of trying to take a short cut through an orchard.  Because gates and fences are usually put up by the authorities, he’s implying that the rules set up by others, like parents, churches, governments, etc., are denying the couple of sweetness and pleasure. 

The cool thing about the last sentence is it resolves the first two stanzas.  Great poems often have this feel of coming full circle.  He wanted time to stand still in the first stanza.  He warned that it wouldn’t, that they would soon grow old, in the second.  Now he figures they can control time the other way, by making it fly when they’re having fun.