To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell (B. A. II Opt English)

 

To His Coy Mistress 

by Andrew Marvell

Had we but world enough and time,

This coyness, lady, were no crime.

We would sit down, and think which way

To walk, and pass our long love’s day.

Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side

Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide

Of Humber would complain. I would

Love you ten years before the flood,

And you should, if you please, refuse

Till the conversion of the Jews.

My vegetable love should grow

Vaster than empires and more slow;

An hundred years should go to praise

Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;

Two hundred to adore each breast,

But thirty thousand to the rest;

An age at least to every part,

And the last age should show your heart.

For, lady, you deserve this state,

Nor would I love at lower rate.

       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; then worms shall try

That long-preserved virginity,

And your quaint honour turn to dust,

And into ashes all my lust;

The grave’s a fine and private place,

But none, I think, do there embrace.

       Now therefore, while the youthful hue

Sits on thy skin like morning dew,

And while thy willing soul transpires

At every pore with instant fires,

Now let us sport us while we may,

And now, like amorous birds of prey,

Rather at once our time devour

Than languish in his slow-chapped power.

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.

 

Introduction

"To His Coy Mistress" is a poem by the English poet Andrew Marvell. Most likely written in the 1650s in the midst of the English Interregnum, the poem was not published until the 1680s, after Marvell's death. "To His Coy Mistress" is a carpe diem poem: following the example of Roman poets like Horace, it urges a young woman to enjoy the pleasures of life before death claims her. Indeed, the poem is an attempt to seduce the titular "coy mistress." In the process, however, the speaker dwells with grotesque intensity on death itself. Death seems to take over the poem, displacing the speaker's erotic energy and filling the poem with dread.

Andrew Marvell is known for his odd writing style and beautifully metaphysical poetry. He writes about love and life, and plays with elements of time and space. He is most famous for his poem “To His Coy Mistress.” Published posthumously and a fine example of his writing style, “To His Coy Mistress” has inspired much discussion. The poem concerns love, romance, and the aphorism “carpe diem” – living life to the fullest.

Summary

As the poem begins, the speaker is talking about the woman of his dreams. He has attempted many times to court her, but she has shown no interest. In the first stanza, the speaker explains that if he were not constrained by time, by a normal lifespan, he would be able to show her how eternal and deep his love is. He would love her and admire every part of her body intimately. He would admire her eyes for a hundred years, and then take two hundred to admire each breast. He would spend thirty thousand years to admire the rest of her, leaving an entire age to give her his heart. He also tells her that with this limitless time, he would never tire of her resistance and rejection of his advances, and that her coyness would never dissuade him from trying to spend all of eternity together.

In the second stanza, he sadly speaks of the brevity of life, personifying time in a titan-like fashion: “at my back I always hear Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near.” In death, there is no love or romance; he attempts to persuade her to love him by reminding her how short human life is, that their time to be together is brief, and they must hurry to enjoy one another before it is over.

In the third stanza, Marvell writes, “Now let us sport us while we may, and now, like amorous birds of prey.” This stanza is another attempt to get this woman to fall for him. He almost begs her to change her mind, to requite his loving efforts so they can spend the rest of what little time they have together. He does this by using a variety of powerful and almost jarring metaphors. The speaker ends his lament with, “though we cannot make our sun stand still, yet we will make him run,” meaning, although he is unable to stop time, if they were together, they would be so happy that time would fly by.

Critics have called this poem a powerful love story, praising it for its romantic and self-sacrificing elements, where the speaker would truly do anything for the subject. However, delving deeper, critics have found that Andrew Marvell is a master of sarcasm and irony. The metaphors in this poem uttered by other would be great declarations of love. However, Marvell uses such vivid imagery and words to portray ridiculousness. The poem depends on capricious and whimsical phrases that sound less serious and more ironic. The poet uses many death metaphors in the second stanza: “thy marble vault, shall sound my echoing song,” “worms shall try that long preserved virginity,” “into ashes all my lust,” and “the grave's a fine and private place.” These vividly worded metaphors lend irony as the speaker uses the threat of death to woo this woman.

“To His Coy Mistress” is a structured poem written in iambic tetrameter, its rhymes in couplets. Poets, many of whom borrowed phrases such as “world enough and time” and “vaster than empires and more slow,” have praised the poem. Contemporary authors, such as B. F. Skinner and Stephen King, have borrowed lines from the poem to illustrate their characters’ fear of the brevity of life. Other poets, including Anne Finch and A. D. Hope, have written poems from the female subject’s point of view in response to Marvell. Though it was published more than three hundred years ago, its themes still resonate today.