Answer the following questions:
The poems “To His Coy Mistress” and “Coy Mistress” present an argument.
1) What is the topic of the argument?
2) Who wins? Why? Explain your reasoning.
To His Coy Mistress wrote in 1681 by Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)
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 wingèd 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 honour turns 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 glew,
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 chapt 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.
Coy Mistress wrote in 1997 by Annie Finch (born 1956)
(In answer to the poem by Andrew Marvell)
Sir, I am not a bird of prey:
a Lady does not seize the day.
I trust that brief Time will unfold
our youth, before he makes us old.
How could we two write lines of rhyme
were we not fond of numbered Time
and grateful to the vast and sweet
trials his days will make us meet?
The Grave’s not just the body’s curse;
no skeleton can pen a verse!
So while this numbered World we see,
let’s sweeten Time with poetry,
and Time, in turn, may sweeten Love
and give us time our love to prove.
You’ve praised my eyes, forehead, breast:
you’ve all our lives to praise the rest.
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