How vainly men themselves amaze
To win the palm, the oak, or bays,
And their uncessant labours see
Crown’d from some single herb or tree,
Whose short and narrow verged shade
Does prudently their toils upbraid;
While all flow’rs and all trees do close
To weave the garlands of repose.

Fair Quiet, have I found thee here,
And Innocence, thy sister dear!
Mistaken long, I sought you then
In busy companies of men;
Your sacred plants, if here below,
Only among the plants will grow.
Society is all but rude,
To this delicious solitude.

No white nor red was ever seen
So am’rous as this lovely green.
Fond lovers, cruel as their flame,
Cut in these trees their mistress’ name;
Little, alas, they know or heed
How far these beauties hers exceed!
Fair trees! wheres’e’er your barks I wound,
No name shall but your own be found.

When we have run our passion’s heat,
Love hither makes his best retreat.
The gods, that mortal beauty chase,
Still in a tree did end their race:
Apollo hunted Daphne so,
Only that she might laurel grow;
And Pan did after Syrinx speed,
Not as a nymph, but for a reed.

What wond’rous life in this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons as I pass,
Ensnar’d with flow’rs, I fall on grass.

Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less,
Withdraws into its happiness;
The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find,
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas;
Annihilating all that’s made
To a green thought in a green shade.

Here at the fountain’s sliding foot,
Or at some fruit tree’s mossy root,
Casting the body’s vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide;
There like a bird it sits and sings,
Then whets, and combs its silver wings;
And, till prepar’d for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.

Such was that happy garden-state,
While man there walk’d without a mate;
After a place so pure and sweet,
What other help could yet be meet!
But ’twas beyond a mortal’s share
To wander solitary there:
Two paradises ’twere in one
To live in paradise alone.

How well the skillful gard’ner drew
Of flow’rs and herbs this dial new,
Where from above the milder sun
Does through a fragrant zodiac run;
And as it works, th’ industrious bee
Computes its time as well as we.
How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckon’d but with herbs and flow’rs!

The masculine assault upon the reluctance of the “coy” woman lies at the heart of Marvell’s best-known love poem—perhaps the most famous “persuasion to love” or carpe diem poem in English—”To his Coy Mistress.” Everything we know about Marvell’s poetry should warn us to beware of taking its exhortation to carnality at face value. Critics from T. S. Eliot on took note of the poem’s “logical” structure, but then it began to be noticed that the conditional syllogism in that structure is invalid—a textbook case of affirming the consequent or the fallacy of the converse. Has Marvell made an error? Or does he attribute an error to the speaking persona of the poem? Or is the fallacy part of the sophistry that a seducer uses on an ingenuous young woman? Or is it a supersubtle compliment to a woman expected to recognize and laugh at the fallacy? These alternatives must be judged in the light of the abrupt shifts in tone among the three verse paragraphs. In the opening lines the seducer assumes a pose of disdainful insouciance with his extravagant parody of the Petrarchan blason:



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.

Although the Lady is said to “deserve this State,” the compliment is more than a little diminished when the speaker adds that he simply lacks the time for such elaborate wooing. It is also likely that most women would be put off rather than tempted by the charnel-house imagery of the poem’s middle section where the seducer, sounding like a fire-and-brimstone preacher, warns that “Worms shall try / That long preserv’d Virginity.” Finally, the depiction of ****** intimacy at the poem’s close, with its vision of the lovers as “am’rous birds of prey” who will “tear our Pleasures with rough strife,” is again a disconcerting image in an ostensible seduction poem. The persona’s desire for the reluctant Lady is mingled with revulsion at the prospect of mortality and fleshly decay, and he manifests an ambivalence toward ****** love that is pervasive in Marvell’s poetry.”

Pleasures spiral and sprawl outward
Escaping the small chamber your parents regulated it to
Devouring dollops of your time
Until you become sick and restless
Fevers, blankets, and soup for recovery
Seeking madness once you’re rested and wrestling with boredom
This ruinous routine is never naturally rundown
Only perishing once true passion is found

When every pristine picture
With every serene scent
Alongside the most melodic melodies
Joined by teasing, titillating touches
Converge along one path,
Each from a different den
Behold, four fearsome horsemen
Galloping faster than the most energized dart
Towards one defenseless unsuspecting heart

What if the Sphinx ran out of riddles?
Or more pointedly put
Grew resigned of the many that stood before it
Those stuttering in fear
Or those too clever to stick around and converse
What if the Sphinx
Finally shifted its gilded gaze
Unto itself, realizing
Its vast intellect was stifled and stuffed
Into the gaudy an unappealing role
Of an obstacle
Stagnant
How its glittering streams of bright consciousness
Would twist downward into the deepest drain
And the Sphinx thus thoroughly empty
May content itself
To pick up a phone
And shuffle in silence
Searching in-between buffers
Alone
Like the rest of us