Before half-term my 11z/En4 GCSE English class were studying Andrew Marvell’s poem To His Coy Mistress. Before the class actually read the poem, though, we looked at some of the vocabulary that Marvell uses, and one of the tasks I gave the group was to write a poem or piece of prose using a selection of key words from the poem. This is what Bethany Noble wrote:
Adore time as thy beauty,
my winged chariot.My long lost love may place
pleasures through my soul
as her voice sings a slow
song which hides her coyness.May morning near us as fires
grow for love’s power and
sweetness. I let rough rubies
run down your breast and embrace
you in my arms. And could look
into your eyes for an eternity.As always the birds are singing
and echoing through
the empire’s marble floor.
Their strength floods them like a second skin.
There, hurrying along
catching prey before they devour it.But as the crime day gets closer
the ashes are placed
on the ground with dust.And a hundred or thousand
pass through Ganges’ gates and gaze
at the graves that hold people
who lie lifeless from every date
and all a different age.
Heald English 