Episode Details

28 February 2025

Episode 5.05  - Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” - Part 4

Who is the speaker in this poem? Who the audience? Who the Marvell? The conclusion of our four part series.

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Chapters

00:00   Marvell as Sculpture
02:37     - In the Museum
06:02   Opening Theme
06:42   Manyness
13:02   Constructed Speakers, Constructed Authors
14:04     - Failed Seductions
28:12     - Silence in Response
37:20   A Many-Hearted Sculpture
42:31   Accountability to Our Talk
53:17   Closing / Outro

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To His Coy Mistress
Andrew Marvell, 1681

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 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 ro