09 To His Coy Mistress +poems For Analysis

To His Coy Mistress
BY ANDREW MARVELL
Had we but world enough and time, Deserts of vast eternity.
This coyness, lady, were no crime. Thy beauty shall no more be found;
We would sit down, and think which way Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
To walk, and pass our long love’s day. My echoing song; then worms shall try
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side That long-preserved virginity,
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide And your quaint honour turn to dust,
Of Humber would complain. I would And into ashes all my lust;
Love you ten years before the flood, The grave’s a fine and private place,
And you should, if you please, refuse But none, I think, do there embrace.
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Vaster than empires and more slow; Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
An hundred years should go to praise And while thy willing soul transpires
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze; At every pore with instant fires,
Two hundred to adore each breast, Now let us sport us while we may,
But thirty thousand to the rest; And now, like amorous birds of prey,
An age at least to every part, Rather at once our time devour
And the last age should show your heart. Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
For, lady, you deserve this state, Let us roll all our strength and all
Nor would I love at lower rate. Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
But at my back I always hear Through the iron gates of life:
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near; Thus, though we cannot make our sun
And yonder all before us lie Stand still, yet we will make him run.
The Road Not Taken

BY ROBERT FROST
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And both that morning equally lay
And sorry I could not travel both In leaves no step had trodden black.
And be one traveler, long I stood Oh, I kept the first for another day!
And looked down one as far as I could Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
To where it bent in the undergrowth; I doubted if I should ever come back.
Then took the other, as just as fair, I shall be telling this with a sigh
And having perhaps the better claim, Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
Though as for that the passing there I took the one less traveled by,
Had worn them really about the same, And that has made all the difference.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
BY ROBERT FROST
Whose woods these are I think I know. He gives his harness bells a shake
His house is in the village though; To ask if there is some mistake.
He will not see me stopping here The only other sound’s the sweep
To watch his woods fill up with snow. Of easy wind and downy flake.
My little horse must think it queer The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
To stop without a farmhouse near But I have promises to keep,
Between the woods and frozen lake And miles to go before I sleep,
The darkest evening of the year. And miles to go before I sleep.
A Brook in the City
The farmhouse lingers, though averse to square

With the new city street it has to wear
A number in. But what about the brook
That held the house as in an elbow-crook?
I ask as one who knew the brook, its strength
And impulse, having dipped a finger length
And made it leap my knuckle, having tossed
A flower to try its currents where they crossed.
The meadow grass could be cemented down
From growing under pavements of a town;
The apple trees be sent to hearth-stone flame.
Is water wood to serve a brook the same?
How else dispose of an immortal force
No longer needed? Staunch it at its source
With cinder loads dumped down? The brook was thrown
Deep in a sewer dungeon under stone
In fetid darkness still to live and run --
And all for nothing it had ever done
Except forget to go in fear perhaps.
No one would know except for ancient maps
That such a brook ran water. But I wonder
If from its being kept forever under,
The thoughts may not have risen that so keep
This new-built city from both work and sleep.
Easter, 1916
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
That woman's days were spent

In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our wingèd horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
Hearts with one purpose alone

Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road,
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.
Too long a sacrifice

Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse—
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:

09 To His Coy Mistress +poems For Analysis

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09 To His Coy Mistress +poems For Analysis

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To His Coy Mistress

The Road Not Taken

A Brook in the City

The farmhouse lingers, though averse to square

That woman's days were spent

Hearts with one purpose alone

Too long a sacrifice

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