The cruelest month: Quaint honour turn to dust

My final National Poetry Month poem is Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”.

You know, when you’re in high school, you think reading a 300-year-old poem about a guy trying to get into his girlfriend’s knickers (if they had knickers back then) is pretty racy. (Or you did when I was in HS; maybe now you’d have to catch them in kindergarten.)

But some years on, I read this differently: Marvell is reminding us that life is short, and when you get to the end of it what you’ll regret is more likely going to be what you didn’t do than what you did.

Every step of the way we have choices. Take this turn or that? Order your usual latte or try something potentially icky with soy in its name? Shake his hand or give him a bit of a snog? Little black dress or multicolored silk with handkerchief hems? Callas or Tupac? Bus or Tube?

(In each of these instances, there’s a third option: do neither, which—when I think of it—is heartbreaking.)

When Marvell urges his mistress to become with him “am’rous birds of prey” and tear pleasures with rough strife, he’s advising us to rip the hell out of life, in much the same way Tennyson did when he had Ulysses say, “I will drink life to the lees”. One view from the young man, another from the old.

I wish I’d paid more attention to them both.

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

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.

That’s it for poetry month. I’ve really enjoyed reacquainting myself with the 31 poets (remember, I started with two at the beginning). I so need poetry in my life.

Don’t we all?