let us sport us while we may

It was sunny this morning, and this evening the sky was just the right shade of cloudy-clear blue. I accidentally napped through dinner, but that meant that I got to have a late dinner with Aurora, and much excellent conversation. There was excellent conversation at lunch, too, with Aurora and Sarah and Hayley and Puja. Zoe was here for a bit this evening, and we read relevant bits of Pride and Prejudice aloud in order to illustrate the point that nobody, not even Mr. Darcy, is any good at expressing affections. My wayward queers are becoming progressively less wayward, my room is clean, my laundry is done, Doctor Who is downloading, and soon I will be writing, writing, writing.

This poem has nothing to do with any of that, although it does have to do with Catullus. And spring. And youth and love and maybe even, in an abstracted sort of way, being a college student.

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-chapt power.
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, To His Coy Mistress, 1651-2, published 1681