In Competition No. 2917 you were invited to submit a reply from Andrew Marvell’s coy mistress.

Marvell’s mix of cajoling wit and harsher truths failed to persuade the Australian (male) poet A.D. Hope. Here’s an extract from his blistering reply, ‘His Coy Mistress to Mr Marvell’, published in 1978:

Had you addressed me in such terms
And prattled less of graves and worms,
I might, who knows, have warmed to you;
But, as things stand, must bid adieu