Andrew Marvell
To His Coy Mistress
| 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 | 5 |
| 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. | 10 |
| 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, | 15 |
| 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. | 20 |
| But at my back I always hear | |
| Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near; | |
| And yonder all before us lie | |
| Deserts of vast eternity. | |
| Thy beauty shall no more be found, | 25 |
| 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: | 30 |
| 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 | 35 |
| 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-chapt power. | 40 |
| 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 | 45 |
| Stand still, yet we will make him run.
|
(From the Oxford Book of English Verse, edited by Quiller-Couch)