To His Coy Mistress (13)

If a more charming and irresistible pitch for sex has ever been crafted, then I've yet to read it. This poem is as fresh today as it must have sounded when first written — in the mid-seventeenth century. Its poetic themes are ageless: the urgency of desire, the joys of love and the fugitive nature of time. It took the art of chatting up and smooth talking to new heights, which I doubt have been surpassed. Carpe diem!

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.

ANDREW MARVELL

Marvell was also the author of another favourite poem of mine, The Garden.

A Green Thought In A Green Shade

Today I worked in the garden. I cleared some weeds; I planted some flowers. Then I rested a while and let my mind wander. A robin perched nearby and sang. Two baby blue tits, not yet very blue, alighted on one of the lilacs, their mother close behind. They were wet and bedraggled. They shook themselves like puppies after a bath. I think their mother must have been teaching them the necessary skill of bathing - so that their feathers kept in good condition.

What wondrous life in this [garden] I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons, as I pass,
Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass.

Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less
Withdraws into its happiness;
The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas;
Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade.

Here at the fountain's sliding foot,
Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root,
Casting the body's vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide;
There, like a bird, it sits and sings,
Then whets and combs its silver wings,
And, till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.

These are the three pivotal verses from Andrew Marvell's great metaphysical poem The Garden.

A Garden (hortus conclusus) is enclosed and contained; but the Mind, or the Garden of the Mind (hortus mentis), is boundless (...it creates.../Far other worlds, and other seas;/Annihilating all that's made/To a green thought in a green shade). The soul, like an angel or a dove, or perhaps like a robin, sits and sings, glides into the boughs and whets and combs its silver wings, perhaps like a blue tit.

No apple harvest, melon bounty or crushed grape juice today. Wrong time of year. But at all times of year there's the possibility of a pregnant green thought, the imaginative potential for soaring flight.

The photo is of a marsh marigold in my garden. Like a lotus flower, it's rooted in muck at the bottom of the pond. And, also like a lotus flower, it awakens into glory.