TO HIS COY MISTRESS

TO HIS COY MISTRESS

1. Although Andrew Marvell writes "To His Coy Mistress" in first-person point of view, he presents the poem as the plea of another man (fictional, of course). The poet enters the mind of the man and reports his thoughts as they manifest themselves. The young man is impatient, desperately so, unwilling to tolerate temporizing on the part of the young lady. His motivation appears to be carnal desire rather than true love; passion rules him. Consequently, one may describe him as immature and selfish.

   • It is a 'metaphysical' poem - which mocks conventional poetry and is characterised by grand language
     • In response to a young man’s declarations of love for a young lady, the lady is playfully hesitant, artfully demure. But dallying will not do, he says, for youth passes swiftly. He and the lady must take advantage of the moment, he says, and “sport us while we may.” Oh, yes, if they had “world enough, and time” they would spend their days in idle pursuits, leisurely passing time while the young man heaps praises on the young lady. But they do not have the luxury of time, he says, for “time's winged chariot” is ever racing along. Before they know it, their youth will be gone; there will be only the grave. And so, the poet pleads his case: Seize the day.
       • It presents a familiar theme in literature–carpe diem (meaning seize the day), a term coined by the ancient Romans
         • The poem is often considered one of the finest and most concise carpe diem arguments ever put in verse.
           • times of the poet,: circa 1650. England was beginning its era of great exploration and the discovery of the exotic east.
             • Timeless is his love. Patience renders the reward all the more worthwhile.
               • She is left with chance or fate if she exchange chastity for a lie.
                 • Marvell’s speaker issues a challenge to contemporary beliefs about female sexuality. The Reformation years witnessed a shift away from the medieval church’s embrace of celibacy to an emphasis on “holy matrimony.” Yet seventeenth-century preachers would emphasize similarly the importance of female chastity in marriage and warned also of the moral and spiritual repercussions of lust.
             • This poem is split into three sections the thesis, antithesis and synthesis.
               • the poem transcends time and culture
   • The coy attracts. It is not merely for the gratification of vanity or from a desire of conquest; and, without any intention of responding to the feelings aroused in her plaything. It was and still is more the convention in Marvel's day for a pretty woman when she found herself interacting with an available man, to display shyness or reserve or unwillingness, but may be lost on the present generation as a value of standard.

2. the flood referring to Noah a part belonging to the Genesis in the Bible. So he would love her since ever. And then he adds 'Till the conversion of the Jews' ... most Jews never have converted ... Those two religious references are just a way to tell her that he would love and praise her during a very very long time before getting into any kind of sexual intercourse with her, but ..." coy mistress: the flood part happened sometime after creation. The conversion of the jews is suppose to happen before Armageddon. Just think forever or eternity. He is trying to assure her of a lasting love as opposed to a fleeting encounter.

   • vegetable love - their love for one and the other may well grow slowly, deep, complex and vast.

3. After the sex act, "the last age should show your heart." What is left? once the heat of sexual passion subsides, as it always does, then -- one will be left with a blemished person and the best that can be hoped is that one is left with a beloved who tells the truth, who shuns sham, who has a heart. He may know this, she does not.

   • Taken as an allegory of political rebellion, Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” also suggests a rejection of existing conventional beliefs and power structures in seventeenth-century England. Marvell’s ambivalent relationship with the monarchy—one defined by the execution of Charles I, the defining event for Marvell and his contemporaries—illuminates some of the tensions between self and society that emerge in the poem.
     • Marvels love poems constitute an important division of poetry. He was an English author and politician. The poem is divided in to three stanzas narrated by a nameless man who is speaking to a nameless woman. He attempts to persuade her to sleep with him. The lady’s hesitancy and shyness would be acceptable to him is they indeed have enough time – world enough and time.
     • Lower rate – in an ideal world he would love her unconditionally. Poems mood shifts in line 21 as they are running out of time. Her beauty will lie in the grave as her body turns to dust. If he doesn’t take her virginity than the worms in the grave will. And finally amorous words of prey – metaphor of their wildness while making love.
   • hey are finite human beings. Her long preserved virginity will become food for the worms. Roll all our strength and all our sweetness up into one ball – they are alluding to their physical bodies coming together in the act of sex. The lofty ideas of chastity and virtue.

4. He eloquently points out that the cares of the moment do not matter as time is slowly absorbing them both, as it does all things. Marvel displays in full glory his epicurean philosophy

   • He places her in the afterworld in beauty and spirit, rather than in the decay of age and crudality. He reminds her that her youth and sexual vibrancy are fleeting, while referring to the essence of her soul. Very subtle
   • The poem reflects the tradition of the erotic blazon. The verse form consists of rhyming couplets. Iambic tetrameter features – AABBCCCDD rhyme scheme. Vegetable love connotes steadiness and slow growth. Times winged chariot refers to the god of the sun. Deserts of the vast eternity alluding to emptiness. Being deserted is dying and entering an eternity of hell or limbo.

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