Friday, February 12, 2010

For Valentine's Day

In honor of Valentine's Day here is a rather silly poetic exercise. It is an answer to Andrew Marvel's To His Coy Mistress. As most readers will recognize this is the poem that begins

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime.

And proceeds as one of the world's most eloquent pick up lines. Nothing suggests how the lady responded. So I have put myself in her place, with something of a 20th century attitude displaced backward a couple of centuries. I feel lucky to have come up with rhymes but please don't attempt to scan the piece. A small smile will suffice:

To My Over-Eager Swain

Kind Sir, your eloquent words do beguile
But yet, I beg you to hesitate a while
And consider, as I must, what I might lose
If headlong enrapturement, as you want, I chose.
If I am spendthrift and give my virginity in haste
All too soon my sylph-like figure would go to waste.
I have weighed the risks and it is my perception
You will not, yay, cannot provide contraception.
While you might incur a burden purely monetary
I've seen many childbirths lead to the mortuary.
If I had but safeguards and certainty
That matching lust with lust was safe for me
You'd find me the very opposite of coy,
I'd jump into bed with most any boy.

5 comments:

Leslie Morgan said...

June, I bow at the altar! OH, this is good. I'm going to print it, emboss it and tuck it into the card I have for my Valentine. He will roar! Thank you for ending my very exhausting week with a laugh I can share with another.

Unknown said...

Fab. Great fun! Cheered my cold ridden self up no end reading that.

Kass said...

Response Haiku

Not so much silly
as wantonly, joyously
expressive of mirth.

rraine said...

kudos!
definitely a woman after my own heart. will you be my valentine?:))
we can go cruise for guys!

Jonas said...

Small smile? Heck, no! I guffawed.

Happy Valentine's Day!