To His Coy Mistress

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 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 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-chapt power. Let us roll all our strength and all Our sweetness up into one ball, And tear our pleasures with rough strife Through the iron gates of life: Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run. To His Coy Mistress is a metaphysical poem written by the British author and statesman Andrew Marvell (1621–1678) either during or just before the Interregnum.

Marvell probably wrote the poem prior to serving in Oliver Cromwell's government as a minister. The poem was not published in his lifetime.

Synopsis
The speaker of the poem addresses a woman who has been slow to respond to his sexual advances. In the first stanza he describes how he would love her if they had an unlimited amount of time. He could spend centuries admiring each part of her body and her refusal to comply would not faze him. In the second stanza, he remembers how short human life is. Once it is over, the opportunity to enjoy each other is gone because no one embraces in the grave. In the last stanza, the speaker urges the woman to comply, arguing that in loving each other with passion they will make the most of the short time they have to live.

Structure
The poem is written in iambic tetrameter and rhymes in couplets. The first stanza ("Had we...") is ten couplets long, the second ("But...") six, and the third ("Now therefore...") seven.

The logical form of the poem runs: if... but... therefore...

Allusions in other works
Many authors have borrowed the phrase "World enough and time" from the poem's opening line to use in their book titles. The most famous is Robert Penn Warren's 1950 novel World Enough and Time: A Romantic Novel, about murder in early-19th century Kentucky. With variations, it has also been used for books on the philosophy of physics (World Enough and Space-Time: Absolute versus Relational Theories of Space and Time), geopolitics (World Enough and Time: Successful Strategies for Resource Management), a science-fiction collection (Worlds Enough & Time: Five Tales of Speculative Fiction - Dan Simmons), and, of course, a biography (World Enough and Time: The Life of Andrew Marvell).

Also in the field of science fiction, Ursula K. Le Guin wrote a Hugo-nominated short story whose title, "Vaster than Empires and More Slow", is a borrowing. Ian Watson notes the debt of the latter story to Marvell, "whose complex and allusive poems are of a later form of pastoral to that which I shall refer, and, like Marvell, Le Guin's nature references are, as I want to argue, "pastoral" in a much more fundamental and interesting way than this simplistic use of the term.".

The phrase "there will be time" occurs repeatedly in a section of T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1915), and is often said to be an allusion to Marvell's poem. Prufrock says that there will be time "for the yellow smoke that slides along the street", time "to murder and create", and time "for a hundred indecisions ... Before the taking of a toast and tea". As Eliot's hero is, in fact, putting off romance and consummation, he is (falsely) answering Marvell's speaker. Eliot also alludes to the lines near the end of Marvell's poem, "Let us roll all our strength and all / Our sweetness up into one ball," with his lines, "To have squeezed the universe into a ball / To roll it toward some overwhelming question," as Prufrock questions whether or not such an act of daring would have been worth it. Eliot returns to Marvell in The Waste Land with the line "But at my back from time to time I hear / The sound of horns and motors" (Part III, line 196).

In the movie 25th Hour, the last verse of the poem is recited in an English class. Andrew Marvell's poetry plays a significant role in the film The Serpent's Kiss, and Thea/Anne recites part of this poem, which is taken as a spell by another character.

Most recently, Audrey Niffenegger's fiction novel The Time Traveler's Wife borrows heavily from Andrew Marvell's poem. The novel focuses on the main character Henry DeTamble, a reluctant time-traveler who proclaims his love for his wife Clare Abshire through the use of the phrase, "World enough and time".

Archibald MacLeish's poem "", alludes to the passage of time and to the growth and decline of empires. In his poem, the speaker, lying on the ground at sunset, feels "the rising of the night". He visualizes sunset, moving from east to west geographically, overtaking the great civilizations of the past, and feels "how swift how secretly/The shadow of the night comes on."

In the Ernest Hemingway novel, A Farewell to Arms, Lt. Henry recites the lines, "But at my back I always hear/Time's winged chariot hurrying near", during a scene in chapter 23 where he and Catherine Barkley are eating in a hotel room.

Peter S. Beagle's novel A Fine and Private Place has two ghosts falling in love. Ellery Queen used Fine and Private Place for one of his novels.

In Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's 1946 film A Matter of Life and Death, aka Stairway to Heaven, the hero played by David Niven quotes lines 21-24:("But at my back I always hear" etc.) He then adds: "Andy Marvell - what a marvel!".

In Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham, while driving through the post-apocalyptic outskirts of London, the character Coker, when speaking to the protagonist, quotes Marvell: "and yonder all before us lie, deserts of vast eternity. . ."

Woody Allen included the poem's opening two lines in his screenplay for the film What's New Pussycat?, in the scene where Peter O'Toole attempts to seduce intellectual stripper Paula Prentiss.

Actor David McCallum, as Russian spy Illya Kuryakin, declines an offer to spend time with a beautiful lady with the line "Had I but world enough and time" in "The Bow-Wow Affair," an episode of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. from 1965.

Brian Kinney uses the phrase "Had we but world enough, and time" in Queer as Folk season five's fifth episode when asked to inform all of his sexual partners that they need to be tested.

American science fiction author Joe Haldeman used the title "Worlds Enough and Time" for the final volume of his "Worlds" trilogy.

Poet Billy Collins alludes to the last stanza, "iron gates of life," in the poem Carpe Diem from the collection "Ballistics".

the Irish historian Peter Brown named one chapter of his most famous work "The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity" "a fine and private place".