Andrew Marvell (1621 – 1678)
English metaphysical poet, and the son of an Anglican clergyman.
No creature loves an empty space;
Their bodies measure out their place.
As lines, so loves oblique may well
Themselves in every angle greet;
But ours so truly parallel,
Though infinite, can never meet.
Art indeed is long, but life is short.
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.
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.
Ye living lamps, by whose dear light
The nightingale does sit so late
And studying all the summer night
Her matchless songs does meditate;
Ye country comets, that portend
No war, nor prince's funeral,
Shining unto no higher end
Than to presage the grasses's fall;
Ye glow-worms whose officious flame
To wandering mowers shows the way,
That in the night have lost their aim
And after foolish fires do stray;
Your courteous lights in vain you waste,
Since juliana here is come,
For she my mind hath so displaced
That I shall never find my home.
He nothing common did or mean
Upon that memorable scene,
But with his keener eye
The axe's edge did try.
This indigested vomit of the Sea,
Fell to the Dutch by Just Propriety.
She with her eyes my heart does bind,
She with her voice might captivate my mind.
Society is all but rude,
To this delicious solitude.
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.
Therefore the love which us doth bind,
But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the mind,
And opposition of the stars.