How To Seduce Like a Poet

Today's poem is Andrew Marvell's 17th century masterpiece "To His Coy Mistress.

Of course, we all know that this type of sexual misconduct occurs. It has always occurred and it always will occur.

A fiend is a fiend, and we must not coddle or protect or make excuses for him. Instead, we must show another way.

Men must seduce women. It is in our nature and it is part of the joy of living. Seduction should not be centered around power, cars, cash, clothes or casa. Seduction should be centered around the fine use of words.

In this the poets can teach us much of how to seduce. After all, the poets are the grandest users of words as well as above average livers of life. To them we must go to learn the seduction techniques and the arguments to make to... well... to get laid. Words are the weapon of choice for a grand poet and for a good man. Learn how to seduce from a 17th century poet.

To His Coy Mistress

by Andrew Marvell

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-chapped power.

Let us roll all our strength and all

Our sweetness up into one ball,

And tear our pleasures with rough strife

Through the iron gates of life:

Thus, though we cannot make our sun

Stand still, yet we will make him run.