once upon a time Andrew Marvell wrote a poem about the choice to make great love or great art when faced with the blunt edge of mortality
Had we but world enough and time, This coyness, lady, were no crime. 1
the poet that hates coyness -- sence there innit not time enough to enjoy life's pleasures as it is -- let alone with the timidity of his "Coy Mistress" -- sai-zee, if he had eternity -- his "vegetable love sould grow vaster than empires and more slow"-- anyhoo this were not the case--
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; ... 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.
though his "echoing song" sounds not in his lovers tomb --the poem itself seems an attempt at hastening life's pleasure, carpe diem, as twere--
there in that tomb is only that spectre-- that of love lost in two forms: in his virgin lover and his verse--
therefore The Ked ere read this poem as a reflection on writing--
Had we but world enough and time, This coyness, lady, were no crime.