Author Information
To His Coy Misttress
To Love's True Mistress
We SHALL have time enough and world,
with Life and Love and dreams fulfilled --
my Love -- to fly! and float! on dreams,
rehearse our love and Love's sweet schemes.
I'll find thee and thy soft abode
by tracking words that Romance rode
to me through Time : I strode the tide,
Love's swelling sea -- to thee. I cried
for thine my tears. Unstanched the flood.
If thee my ardor pleased, I would,
til Greenland's solid mantle melt,
cause rock to feel the love I've felt.
Love's conjugation our hearts will show;
Infinity comparable will not know;
My numberless kisses thou shalt bear
on breast and hollow, lips and ear.
Full passions spent on each warm part,
the warmest laid within thy heart.
O, Heart of Love, make thrall thy state;
let pulse to pulse Love's tale relate.
.......But hov'ring ever at my ear
those quaint words of thine oath I hear;
echoes from far Eternity.
Come! Hand-in-hand range and explore
vistas of vast Evermore!
Know Beauty as was never known
since God slept on His Seventh Throne.
He rests as Nature has its fling
improving (spoiling) God's perfect thing.
All low, all noble shall descend
while copulating Death: "The End."
But Love is Virtue and "God Is Love",
and I and you hold Love's Treasure Trove.
So, let us love -- this I, this you --
while Day is young, while night sips dew,
as heart in heart Love love inspires;
Love's words rehearsed, Times polishing(*) Fires
of our emotions, gains, losses.
We shun Life's thorns, embrace It's roses.
Then like the Dawn, at close of day,
spent all our light eventually.
The tumbling clod, a bank of snow,
rays bent at morn -- none can well show
nor can they tell what Passion girds
my boundless heart, my love's true words.
That's th'purpose for this petty rhyme,
Had We But World Enough, And Time.
(On Andrew Marvell)
