To His Coy Mistress

"To His Coy Mistress"
by Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)

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.

Pattiann Rogers Comments:
This poem is funny and frightening. It’s witty, light-hearted, and as serious as steel. It’s a sunflower in full bloom and an icy clutch at the heart. This is not a frivolous poem.

Even on a first read, it isn’t difficult to understand the poem’s ostensible focus--the speaker’s attempts to seduce the woman he wants.

First, the title, notice the “his.” Marvel has put a tiny step between himself and the speaker of the poem. Someone else spoke these words, not me, he implies. “Coy” suggests not adamant refusal on the part of the woman in the poem, but a slightly playful affect in her reluctance to engage in sex with the speaker. “Mistress,” in Marvell’s time, meant a sweetheart or a woman being courted.

In the first stanza, the speaker is being funny (always a good way to soften up a woman, assuming he’s genuinely amusing). If we had eternity, we could just hang-out together for as long as we wanted, he suggests, wildly exaggerating details of an endless courtship. “An hundred years should go to praise/Thine eyes...” Is she smiling? “Two hundred to adore each breast” “Thirty thousand to the rest.” Is she laughing?

“But at my back I always hear/ Time’s winged chariot hurrying near;” A sharp turn to reality begins the second stanza where shocking imagery of the future reinforces the speaker’s position that prolonged lingering is ridiculous. Dead within your marble vault, he tells her, “...worms shall try/ that long presevered virginity, /And your quaint honour turn to dust, /And into ashes all my lust:” Here lust seems almost beautiful, almost noble, compared with oblivion. Don’t talk about death! Her hands are over her ears.

His last appeal, the logical conclusion, comes in the final stanza. Now, while we are full of life and desire, “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:” Many pages could be written, and most probably have been, about all the meanings and nuances present in those four lines.

Has he won over “his coy mistress”? He’s made his best case, and some would assert that it is the very best case ever made for the carpe diem theme. Life is brief. Seize the day. Is there a poem written in the voice of the coy mistress giving her side of this debate? There should be.

Perhaps fewer coy mistresses are around today, but this poem, being about vastly more than sexual seduction, has endured, regularly included in many anthologies. There are lines and phrases from it that are with us in contemporary work and in common discourse. One of my first English professors often said to our undergraduate class,“Had we but world enough, and time,” usually because class was ending and whatever discussion we were engaged in had to stop.

That phrase and variations of it have been used as the titles of a surprising number of books on a variety of subjects. Here are just a few: World Enough and Time: Successful Strategies for Resource Management; World Enough and Space-Time: Absolute versus Relational Theories of Space and Time; World Enough and Time: Conversations with Canadian Women at Midlife; Worlds Enough and Time: Explorations of Time in Science Fiction and Fantasy; The Memoirs of Aga Khan: World Enough and Time.

“But at my back I always hear/Time’s winged chariot hurrying near.” Google this one. I remember encountering it first as a teenager reading A Farewell to Arms. It has rung in my head ever since.“The grave’s a fine and private place,/But none, I think, do there embrace.” and “Though we cannot make our sun/Stand still, yet we will make him run.” are also familiar. Fine and Private Place is the title of an Ellery Queen mystery. T. S. Eliot uses phrases, often inverted or modified, from this poem all the way through “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”

Phrases and lines from “To His Coy Mistress,” quoted so often in references to circumstances having nothing to do with sexual seduction, establish the universality of the poem’s essential themes and their reach beyond its ostensible focus. The seduction is merely the stage upon which Marvell presents the case for carpe diem, and he presents it magnificently.

How wonderful to have written a poem like this one that moves through generation after generation for nearly 400 years, influencing other work and thought, and maintaining its music, its energy, its significance, and its pure joy in its own being.

About Pattiann Rogers:
Pattiann Rogers has published 13 books; the most recent, Wayfare, appears from Penguin this spring, 2008. She received a Literary Award from the Lannan Foundation in 2005. She has two sons and three grandsons and lives with her husband in Colorado.