To His Coy Mistress

Had we but world enough, and time, the poem begins, and for a few luxurious lines it lets us believe we do: a hundred years to praise her eyes, two hundred to adore each breast, thirty thousand for the rest. Then comes the most famous swerve in English love poetry, "But at my back I always hear / Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near," and the spell of leisure shatters. Marvell's seducer is too honest to flatter; he argues, and the argument is death itself. The grave is a fine and private place, he warns her, but none embrace there, and worms will try what her long caution has preserved. What makes the poem ache rather than merely dazzle is that the case for pleasure traps the one who makes it: the chariot is at his back too. By the close he is not pleading but blazing, urging that they tear their pleasures with rough strife through the iron gates of life. Read it once and every clock in the room grows louder.