So That's How Shakespeare Did It

Try teaching a group of thirteen year olds about poetry. At least one of them will boldly declare it boring before you can say "iambic pentameter."

Or perhaps I was just being too ambitious, trying to teach them about the concept of "Carpe Diem" without playing a clip from Dead Poet's Society. Instead we were reading Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress," which of course is quite old and therefore (they believe) entirely irrelevant to them.

But this poem has one of the most well-known couplets of all time ("But at my back I always hear / Time's winged chariot hurrying near"), so I thought I might as well introduce them. Famous poem, meet reticent teens. Reticent teens, meet a poem that is saucier than it sounds.

The children eventually cottoned on to the fact that there's some quite racy stuff in there, you know, breasts et cetera, so they were willing to hang on for a while.

(Not to illustrate the point, but do note line eleven, where the speaker compares his affection to a vegetable (in its slow-growing quality). It was here that one of the girls burst out, "Is he calling her a vegetable? No wonder she doesn't love him back!")

Bless them.

Check this out:

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 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 preserv'd 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 am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp'd 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.


When I asked, "What do we know about the speaker of this poem? For instance, how does he feel about this girl?" the kids declared him "kind of clingy." From there they were ready to move on, but I, stick-in-the-mud at your service, insisted we dwell a little longer and learn how to call it hyperbole.

I noted that Marvell had written roughly around the same time as Shakespeare (as in, the same century). One of the children asked, "So how did Shakespeare do it?" I replied, "Well, I like to think he had a lot of practice."

The child thought about this, then shook his head.

"I think he was just lucky."

As if Shakespeare happened on every sonnet in the same way you'd find a five-dollar-bill in your trouser pocket, folded and crisp from the wash. Oh, I thought. We have a long way to go. Our vegetable knowledge of poetry may (or may not) grow vaster than empires, and will certainly do so more slow.

Speaking of lucky, though - yeah, I feel that.