Saturday, July 31

To His Coy Mistress

(should have guessed the truth from the title, methinks.. ah well. Lesson.. learned!)

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 Gorges' 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 they 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 honor 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 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
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
-Andrew Marvell

(as copied over and sent by the ex-boyfriend whom i was unknown mistress of, along with this note: "18 May, 2002/Hey there sweet thang -/ Just thinking about you this afternoon. Having kind of a bad day, but it's all good when I'm thinking about you. I should just keep on doing that. Life seems so damn good when I'm with you. I should just keep on doing that. Someday../Love You, Steve.", who is now married and father to a child by the girl he turned to when his girlfriend and i, the other woman, discovered the truth about what he was doing to us.)

2 comments:

Byagi said...

I dont know much poetry, but I went through a period of time where I really started to get into it. It was an angry time for me. Here is one I really kind of liked.

Cold on my narrow cot I lie
and in sorrow look
through my window-square of black:

figured in the midnight sky,
a mosaic of stars
diagrams the falling years,

while from the moon, my lover's eye
chills me to death
with radiance of his frozen faith.

Once I wounded him with so
small a thorn
I never thought his flesh would burn

or that the heat within would grow
until he stood
incandescent as a god;

now there is nowhere I can go
to hide from him:
moon and sun reflect his flame.

In the morning all shall be
the same again:
stars pale before the angry dawn;

the gilded cock will turn for me
the rack of time
until the peak of noon has come

and by that glare, my love will see
how I am still
blazing in my golden hell.


To a Jilted Lover by Sylvia Plath

Sunny said...

..thank you..