How Swift, How Secretly

A lot of people in my age bracket know bits of this poem because of a certain painfully earnest tear-jerker of a film called "Dead Poets Society." (Stay tuned for more on that subject.)

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time

Robert Herrick

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
   Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
   Tomorrow will be dying.


The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
   The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
   And nearer he's to setting.


That age is best which is the first,
   When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
   Times still succeed the former.


Then be not coy, but use your time,
   And while ye may, go marry;
For having lost but once your prime,
   You may forever tarry.




To me it sounds a lot like a fratboy douchebucket minoring in Philosophy trying to get laid at a weekend kegger. It's not a bad point: your jiggly bits tend to get rusty, so may as well use them while they're still under manufacturer's warranty. But the combo of sex and death is just enough on the nose to make me suspicious — this guy can't just let his points stand for themselves, he's got to scare you into bumping uglies with him.


I'm also not convinced that, "That age is best which is the first," without even quibbling over whether he means young adulthood, teenage, infancy or fetushood. When youth and blood are warmer is a pretty miserable time for a lot of people. I'm not convinced the ladies being less coy would do all that much to alleviate it.


Of course, it's a common poetic conceit, and may not be meant to be taken literally. Here's another for comparison.

To His Coy Mistress

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-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.




Again not great, but any poem that can spark an immortal line like, "Had we but worlds enough and time" can't be ignored. And it's a cool poem because it sets this up:

You, Andrew Marvell

Archibald MacLeish

And here face down beneath the sun  
And here upon earth’s noonward height  
To feel the always coming on
The always rising of the night:


To feel creep up the curving east  
The earthy chill of dusk and slow  
Upon those under lands the vast  
And ever climbing shadow grow


And strange at Ecbatan the trees  
Take leaf by leaf the evening strange  
The flooding dark about their knees  
The mountains over Persia change


And now at Kermanshah the gate  
Dark empty and the withered grass  
And through the twilight now the late  
Few travelers in the westward pass


And Baghdad darken and the bridge  
Across the silent river gone
And through Arabia the edge
Of evening widen and steal on


And deepen on Palmyra’s street
The wheel rut in the ruined stone  
And Lebanon fade out and Crete
High through the clouds and overblown


And over Sicily the air
Still flashing with the landward gulls  
And loom and slowly disappear  
The sails above the shadowy hulls


And Spain go under and the shore  
Of Africa the gilded sand
And evening vanish and no more  
The low pale light across that land


Nor now the long light on the sea:


And here face downward in the sun  
To feel how swift how secretly
The shadow of the night comes on ...  





There's exotic geography and a creeping sense of slow and beautiful doom. I first heard of this because a sci-fi author wrote a novel called "Strange at Ecbatan the Trees" and the weird loveliness of the phrase haunted me. I still think this is the work of a master poet: the end of day and start of night, the Old World atlas of places with their glorious histories behind them, the intimations of mortality.


There's only one song that could possibly spring to mind to follow that up, definitely in my five favorite Dylan songs, maybe even top ten songs of all time. (Ignore the terrible lip-synching and just listen to the pedal steel.)