Fun_People Archive
17 Aug
LIT BITS V3 #231

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 100 17:29:51 -0700
To: Fun_People
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Subject: LIT BITS V3 #231
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Excerpted-from: LITERARY CALENDAR V3 #231
From: ptervin@pent.yasuda-u.ac.jp

Today is Friday, 18 August 2000; on this day,

322 years ago (1678),

     Andrew Marvell, satirist and poet ("To His Coy Mistress"), dies at 57
     in London.

218 years ago (1782),

     William Blake, 24, marries Catherine Sophia Boucher, an illiterate
     whom he will teach to share his love of literature.

Today's poem:

                    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

© 2000 Peter Langston