To His Coy Mistress -- Andrew Marvell

 To His Coy Mistress – 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

Shouldest rubies find; I by the tide

Of humber would complain. I would

Love you ten years before the flood,

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-preserved 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 here 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 amorous birds of prey,

Rather at once our time devour

Than languish in his slow-chapped power.

Let us roll all our strength and all

Our sweetness up into one ball,

And tear our pleasures with rough strife

Through the iron gates of life:

Thus, though we cannot make our sun

Stand still, yet we will make him run.

 

Andrew Marvell was very famous writer of political verse and satire. Being a supporter of Oliver Cromwell, he was appointed as assistant Latin Secretary for the Commonwealth Government and worked with John Milton. His poems are known for their dramatic quality. As a poet, his wit and ability of image is admirable. Marvell at first wrote poems of love, nature and religion in which he mixed a delight in the pleasures of life with a simple puritan piety.

 

In the poem ‘To His Coy Mistress’ Marvell expresses man’s helplessness in relation to Time and Space; the poem begins in a note of hurry. The speaker in the poem tells his beloved that how soon time passes and how difficult it is to love leisurely. He even alerts her to tale note of paucity of time and space to love each other in a relaxed way. As love is eternal, the poet thinks of how eternity of time is required to love. 

 

The poet compares time to a winged chariot hurrying behind nearer and nearer. This consciousness of time makes envision the damaging effects of time in his beloved’s life and in his life against the preserved virginity and the respected honour.

 

Against this background the poem proposes his beloved to make the best use of youth and beauty by loving each other.

 

He compares his beloved and himself to birds of prey. Before being devoured by time he proposes that they love each other in such animalistic way that the sun should run, away even it they can not make him stand still. The poet indicates love can conquer.

 

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poem ed by mastanappa puletipalli