RPO -- Annie Finch : Coy Mistress

Annie Finch (1956-)

Coy Mistress

1Sir, I am not a bird of prey:

2a Lady does not seize the day.

3I trust that brief Time will unfold

4our youth, before he makes us old.

5How could we two write lines of rhyme

6were we not fond of numbered Time

7and grateful to the vast and sweet

8trials his days will make us meet:

9The Grave's not just the body's curse;

10no skeleton can pen a verse!

11So while this numbered World we see,

12let's sweeten Time with poetry,

13and Time, in turn, may sweeten Love

14and give us time our love to prove.

15You've praised my eyes, forehead, breast:

16you've all our lives to praise the rest.

Notes

1] "`Coy Mistress' is an imaginary response to Andrew Marvell's famous seduction poem: "The grave's a fine and private place, / But none, I think, do there embrace .... 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 ...:'" (poet's note).

Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
This poem cannot be published anywhere without the written consent of Annie Finch or Story Line Press permissions department.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text:
Publication date note: Eve (Brownsville, Oregon: Story Line Press, 1997): 41. Princeton University Library PS 3556 .I448
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition:
Recent editing: 1:2004/6/16

Composition date note: Composed: 1978

Other poems by Annie Finch