To His Coy Mistress To His Coy Mistress "To His Coy Mistress" is a metaphysical poem written by the English author and politician Andrew Marvell (1621–1678) either during or just before the English Interregnum (1649–60). It was published posthumously in 1681. This poem is considered one of Marvell's finest and is possibly the best recognized carpe diem poem in English. Although the date of its composition is not known, it may have been written in the early 1650s. At that time, Marvell was serving as a tutor to the daughter of the retired commander of the New Model Army, Sir Thomas Fairfax. The speaker
To His Coy Mistress lovemaking, while A.D. Hope's "His Coy Mistress to Mr. Marvell" turns down the offered seduction outright. Many authors have borrowed the phrase "World enough and time" from the poem's opening line to use in their book titles. The most famous is Robert Penn Warren's 1950 novel "World Enough and Time: A Romantic Novel," about murder in early-19th-century Kentucky. With variations, it has also been used for books on the philosophy of physics ("World Enough and Space-Time: Absolute versus Relational Theories of Space and Time"), geopolitics ("World Enough and Time: Successful Strategies for Resource Management"), a science-fiction collection ("Worlds Enough &