Lesson 16

W
Handout 33 (page 1) Name:

39

Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress

Directions: Carefully read the poem, and make annotations about the speaker and the central situation.
To His Coy Mistress w

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 nd; Iby the tide
Of Humber would complain. Iwould
Love you ten years before the ood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow; w

An hundred years should go to praise

Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each hreast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part, w
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would Ilove at lower rate.

But at my back Ialways hear

Time’s winged 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 ne and private place.
But none, Ithink, 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 res.
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.

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Lesson 16

Handout 33 (page 2) Name:

Let us roll all our strength and all

Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life;
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
—Andrew Marvell

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Lesson 16

Handout 34 Name;

J 5

Analyzing “To His Coy Mistress

Directions: Use the following questions to analyze Andrew Marvell sfamous poem.

1. The speaker in the poem uses the form of alogical argument: if, but, therefore. Summarize
the content of the argument.

2. Is the actual content as logical as the form?

3. We hear only one side of the conversation. What does it suggest the lady might have said?

4. The poem includes anumber of rhetorical devices—techniques used by public speakers to

persuade and convince audiences. Among these is imagery. Locate two or three powerful im¬
ages, and look for apattern in their presentation.

5. Marvell also included allusions. Identify two of them, and explain the references.

6. Athird rhetorical device is hyperbole. How does it function in the poem?

7. How does the speaker use references to time and place to achieve his purpose?

8. Do you think that his argument was successful? Why or why not?

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 Lesson 16

Name:
Handout 35 (page 1)

Portrait in aSpanish Cloister

Directions: Carefully read “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister” by Victorian poet Robert Browning.
Then write ashort essay in which you identify and describe the speaker, the occasion, and the purpose
of the poem.

Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister

I

Gr-r-r—there go, my heart’s abhorrence!

Water your damned ower-pots, do!
If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,
God’s blood, would not mine kill you!
What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming?
Oh, that rose has prior claims—
Needs its leaden vase lled brimming?
Hell dry you up with its ames!

I I

At the meal we sit together:

Salve tibi! Imust hear

Wise talk of the kind of weather.

Sort of season, time of year:
Not aplenteous cork-crop: scarcely
Dare we hope oak-galls, Idoubt:
What's the Latin name for “parsley"?
What’s the Greek name for swine’s snout?

I l l

Whew! We’ll have our platter burnished.

Laid with care on our own shelf!

With a re-new spoon we’re furnished,

And agoblet for ourself.
Rinsed like something sacri cial
Ere ’tis t to touch our chaps—
Marked with L. for our initial!
(He, he! There his lily snaps!)

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 Lesson 16

Handout 35 (page 2) Name:

I V

Saint, forsooth! While brown Dolores

Squats outside the Convent bank,
With Sanchicha, telling stories,
Steeping tresses in the tank.
Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs,
—Can’t Isee his dead eye glow
Bright, as ’twere aBarbary corsair’s?
(That is, if he’d let it show!)

When he nishes refection.

Knife and fork he never lays
Cross-wise, to my recollection,
As do I, in Jesu’s praise.
I, the Trinity illustrate.
Drinking watered orange-pulp—
In three sips the Arian frustrate;
While he drains his at one gulp!

V I

Oh, those melons! If he’s able

We’re to have afeast; so nice!
One goes to the Abbot’s table.
All of us get each aslice.
How go on your owers? None double?
Not one fruit-sort can you spy?
Strange!—And I, too, at such trouble.
Keep ’em close-nipped on the sly!

V I I

There’s agreat text in Galatians,

Once you trip on it, entails
Twenty-nine distinct damnations,
One sure, if another fails;
If Itrip him just a-dying.
Sure of Heaven as sure can be.
Spin him round and send him ying
Off to Hell, aManichee?

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 Lesson 16

Handout 35 (page 3) Name:

V I I I

Or, my scrofulous French novel

On grey paper with blunt type!
Simply glance at it, you grovel
Hand and foot in Belial’s gripe:
If Idouble down its pages
At the woeful sixteenth print.
When he gathers his greengages.
Ope asieve and slip it in’t?
I X

Or, there’s Satan! ●one might venture

Pledge one’s soul to him, yet leave
Such a aw in the indenture

As he’d miss till, past retrieve.

Blasted lay that rose-acacia
We’re so proud of! Hy, Zy, Him...
’St, there’s Vespers! Plena gratia
Ave, Virgo! Gr-r-r—you swine!
—Robert Browning

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