To Her Dull Master

By Mark Bryce

Andrew Marvell was a 17^th century English poet, satirist and politician. He wrote poetry about the English Civil War as well as poems with religious themes, but today he is best known for his poem ‘To His Coy Mistress’. On the surface it is a seduction poem, but the poem is really famous for its clever conceits and its play on the theme of carpe diem. Basically, it argues that the woman who is the object of his desire should have sex with him before she is too old or dies.

My own poem is a response to Marvell’s poem, which is why they are published here, together. On wider screens you will see the poems side by side but on narrower computer screens and phones, Marvell’s poem will appear under my own.

I first wrote a version of this poem while I was at university doing a poetry course run by Heather Cam. She set us the task of writing our own poem from the perspective of the woman as a response to Marvell’s poem. For some reason that I can’t remember, I modified that poem years later, and I now have two modified versions. The version that appears below is, I think, the better of the two. If I find a copy of my original version, I will also include that on this page.

To Her Dull Master

Were you worldly enough, with sense,
Your courting, sir, would no offence,
Give me to complain. For we should
Spend our Spring time in a wood
Entwined in hoary boughs of sin,
Far better thus to coax you in.
Or if your love be tired we’d talk
‘long silent river where we walk,
Then fall and pluck the rose of love,
The better, thus, your love to prove.
Why talk of coyness? Why so slow?
Why should your love in ages grow
If this desire be full and bold?
For idle hearts grow tired and old
When desire’s stilled by a young man’s wit
Pretending to a lover’s fit.
Love has courage in its power,
Love’s not frightened to devour
A willing woman who would take
A savage lover for her mate.
Dare you hope be more than friend?
Yet call me ‘sweet’, we’re at an end –
Your words try patience; like a bride
Swept upon her swelling tide,
Then caste upon your shore, so dry,
You sire vast deserts with your sigh,
And with each breath you draw the thought,
That a woman’s love is cheaply bought:
A lover is a wondrous boon,
Unless, like you, he is a goon.
Therefore I shall no longer wait
And measure verses as you prate,
But long for braver men than you
To mingle with my ‘youthful glue’.
A braver man who will partake
In lover’s rites beside the lake
And set ablaze my soul’s desire,
Where limbs, not mouths, speak heated fire.
Then I shall be the bird of prey
And my lover shall worm his way
Into the gullet of my lust.
So speak of loving if you must,
In ardent terms of future time,
When we are dead and rot in slime,
And your pleas for passion no more,
Hound me like a neglected chore.

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-chapped 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.

Andrew Marvell