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Andrew Marvell.pdf
Andrew Marvell

2º Literatura Inglesa Ii

Grado en Estudios Ingleses

Facultad de Filosofía y Letras

Universidad de Granada

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su totalidad.
ANDREW MARVEL
- He Wrote less tan Donne, Jonson and Herbert, but his range was greater, he claimed
both the private worlds of love and religion and the public words of political and satiric
poetry and prose.
- His overriding concern with art, his elegant, well-crafted, limpid style and the balance
and reserve of dome poems align him with Jonson.
- Yet his paradoxes and complexities of tone, his use of dramatic monologue, and his
witty, dialectical arguments associate him with Donne.
- Supremely original poet, complex and elusive.
- His earliest poems associate him with royalists, those after 1649 celebrate the
Commonwealth and Oliver Cromwell, although he is ambivalent.
- He recognizes divine providence in political changes.

Reservados todos los derechos. No se permite la explotación económica ni la transformación de esta obra. Queda permitida la impresión en su totalidad.
- Love lyrical and pastorals as Upon Appleton House.
- He accepted the Restoration but maintained his own independent vision and belief in
religious toleration, a mixed state, and constitutional government.
- Diplomatic missions. Antiroyalist polemics, he creates verse satires on Charles II and
his ministers, as well as his prose work The Rehearsal Transprosed, which defends
Puritan dissenters and denounces censorship with verve and wit.
- Brilliant poem of criticism and interpretation on Milton’s Paradise Lost.
- His poems explore the human condition in terms of fundamental dichotomies that
resist resolution.
- Religious or philosophical poems: “The Coronet” or “The Dialogue Between the Soul
and Body”. Conflict between nature and grace, or body and soul, or poetic creation
and sacrifice.
- Love poems: “The Definition of Love” or “To His Coy Mistress”: between flesh and
spirit, or physical sex and platonic love, or idealizing courtship and the ravages of time.
- Pastorals: the Mower poems and “The Garden”: opposition between nature and art,
fallen and the Edenic state, or violent passion and contentment.
- Most subtle and complex political poem: “An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell´s Return
from Ireland”: sets stable traditional order and ancient right against providential
revolutionary change, the goods and costs of retirement and peace against those of
action and war.
- Uppon Appleton House: he transforms the static, mythic features of Jonson´s country-
house poem “To Penshurst” to create a poem that incorporates history and the
conflicts of contemporary society. It assimilates to the course of providential history
the topographical features of the Fairfax state, family myth of origin, experiences of
the poet-tutor on his progress around the state, and the activities and projected future
of the daughter of the house. In the poem´s rich symbolism, biblical events find echoes
in the experiences of the Fairfax family, the speaker, the history of the English
Reformation, and the wanton destruction of the recent civil wars.
 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

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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

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 My echoing song; then worms shall try

That long-preserved virginity,

And your quaint honour turn to dust,

And into ashes all my lust;

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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

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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.

QUESTIONS
1 What is the main idea in the poem? Study versification and rhyme and explain why this type of versification
matches the topic of the poem.
→ Arguing in order to convince the lady to have sex. Carpe diem central idea.
Couplets → the union of the lovers reflected with the couplet.
4 feet
3 stanzas: 1-20; 21-32;33- ---> to break monotony.
stanza 1 → describing lady as a goddess. By blazon, connecting with the Petrarcha trdition. hypotethical tone at the beggining of
the poem. Contrast with the second stanza “if we had time we could be like this but we don’t have time” Optimistic, hyperbolic
presentation of time.
stanza 2 → We don’t have time for all that bullshit. Time as destructive. Pesimistic presentation of time. Shocking effect in the lady
Stanza 3 → Now→ carpe diem. He demands action from the lady.Stop being silly and act.
Number of lines is shorter in stanza 2 because presents time as cruel, so less space to discuss it. Stanza 1 is more long

2 Who is the addressee? Is he/she formally or colloquially addressed?

→ The lady. “thou and you” → combination of formal and informal. Shows respect for the lady, politeness expected from a
gentleman, but he needs to get close to the lady, win her affections. Win the lady’s interest.

3 Marvell carefully plans his arguments to persuade the lady. Each stanza develops a central idea. What is the
idea in each of the three stanzas?

STANZA 1
4 There is a predominant rhetorical device in Stanza 1, very much used by Petrarchans, and which Marvell
parodies. It is quite an effective image to impress the lady and show the speaker’s complete devotion to her.
What is this device? Provide examples and explain them.
→ Very exaggerated presentation of the lovers, hyperbolic. Using platonism from the beginning as a strategy. Two first
lines of the poem presents the tone of the whole poem.
3-4 → repetition “and” → they can do a lot of things because they have all the time of the world. Presented as slow.
Hypotethical because is not real. Combination of caesura and enjabment to empahsize the slowness of time//
continuation of time. Emphasize the lack of stop.
alliterarion → “w” → relaxion, hypothetical time. like a dream somehow
“india” → example of exotism. Lady presented as exotic and the man is just the english figure.
Caesura → emphasize the separation between them. Exotic element that is going to be controlled and consumed by the man.
“rubies” → projective value of the lady.
he is suffering for the lady.
Flood → death
vaster than empiers → colonial, imperealistic. reference
11 → love compared with a plant, that grows. the strenght of the love that extends as the english empire.
Blazons → eyes, forehead, breasts, rest of the body and heart. Starts physical description of the lady and ends with the prominence
that he gives to love.
presentation of time totally hyperbolic.
paralellism ..> hyperbolic dimension of time “an hundred years…..two hundred”
“praise, gaze, adore” → very petrarchan

STANZA 2
5 After the hypothetical presentation of an eternal time and space, Stanza 2 offers harsher images of Death.
Comment on this shocking imagery.
→ Clasical images of time. you cannot escape time. Intertextual connection.
There’s an end in the world and an abysm. Typical presentation of the earth at the time.
Enjabment → there’s no an end but when the end comes, comes eternity.
death, eternity as desert.
25→ negation to imply the idea of negation. You are gong to age and die. Ubi sunt.
marvel bault → grave
26-27 → contrast btwn enjabment and caeusra. contrast btwn sound of life and the silence of death. “echoing” alliteration of sound
echo

STANZA 3
6 What linguistic and rhetorical devices does the poet use in Stanza 3 to convey the central theme of the
poem? (pay attention to the repetition of words and linguistic structures).

→ Repeteaded → now and while. Carpe diem. present time is what’s important.
let us → demanding to do something.
38 → hunting language. instead of reamining passive about time, they’re going to do an activie role about time by eating it →
having sex.

Level 1
1. The poem opens with a hypothesis which is developed for a number of lines. State
that hypothesis and determine how long the “persona” dwells on it.
During the first stanza, the speaker tells the mistress that if they had more time and space, her
"coyness" (see our discussion on the word "coy" in "What’s Up With the Title?") wouldn’t be a
"crime." He extends this discussion by describing how much he would compliment her and
admire her, if only there was time. He would focus on "each part" of her body until he got to
the heart (and "heart," here, is both a metaphor for sex, and a metaphor for love).

Hypothesis: in the timeless world, it will be immortal passion. Hypothetical world, this time is a
fallacy, an illusion. This coy were no crime. Being coy is in the real life something stupid, but in
the false world of timeless is not a crime. Conditional modes. Remaining the aggressive of the
poem, that it will be all right in the hypothetical timeless world.

How long? Until line 20. Elaborating the different things to show his love for the lady.

2. a. Spot the different instances of hyperbole used in the lines implied above. What is
the value of hyperbole here? Can you find any patterns in this hyperbolical
representation of ideas?
In these 20 lines “the Indian Ganges”, time is suggested by means of geographical distance.
How infinity passion it will be, to be ready to spend all the time necessary, represented in
geographical. Exotic and beautiful places. Pleasant finding rubies, and then “Hummer”, humble
location. Hierarchy of lady surrounded by the best and persona reduced to humble place. Both
locations are very far for each other. Hyperbolic element: travers to one point and to another,
unnecessarily.

Hyperbole: flood Jews. Massive span. Dooms day, end of human time on earth. Encompasses
all the human time on earth. His love for the lady and she is refusing him.

My vegetable world, and hundred years, to hundred, thirty thousand, an age: hyperbolic in the
time. Praising different ladies body parts. Verbal inventory of the different features of the

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lady’s body. Importance of the eyes: their soul or essence. Forehead: the mind, a part of the
face that is he front part of your brain. This noble significant part of the lady’s identity is
mention as receiving a hyperbolic, signifying the hole centre. Less importance in her soul or
mind and more importance on the sexual body, erotic connotations. The last age should show
your heart: something important about the lady, not so high in the hierarchical understanding
of things, physical beauty that may appeal sexually to the person. The heart is last because is
ambivalent, seem that keeping the best for last, or the less important thing that he thinks. The
movement on this stanza help us to conform that this ambivalence may be not such, he has
been to forward, and he need to improve that adding something emotional., more
respectable.

Nor would i love at lower rate: i will not love you any other way. Loving the lady, courting the
lady, praising the lady, and complaining about her refusing. Petrarchan traditions ideas
presented lovers as devoted servant of the lady, pure, eternal love for her. She as a kind of
goddess. In the seduction in the following lines, stablishing how honest noble and devoted he
is as a lover, jus than those lovers in the Petrarchan tradition. To be able to persuade the lady
to give in in the seduction.

Lines 21.22: shift of tone. Winged chariot: Apollos chariot. Destroy the hypothetical idea of
timeless. Time as very urgent thing, flying inescapable: “at my back”, “always”, “hurrying”,
“near”: how closely by time the persona is always there. Constantly hurrying. Reality of time
being an important force in life.

Lines 3-4: The speaker is big on hyperbole, and he uses it to suggest various speeds of motion
and even stillness. "Picking rubies" implies a somewhat leisurely action (although actual ruby-
picking is not leisurely at all).

Lines 8-10: The speaker’s declaration that (if he had time) he would love her "ten years before
the flood" and "till the conversion of the Jews" combines hyperbole and allusion to create
motion, in this case a sense of rapid movement through time. He also uses the grand, Biblical
language ironically to poke fun at the mistress, whom he accuses of wanting something
timeless (like eternal love), while saying in the same breath that he would give this to her, too,
if he has time. This might create the motion of the mistress running away from the speaker.

Lines 18-19: The speaker uses "show your heart" as a metaphor for the mistress’s imagined
agreement to finally have sex with him, implying faster action, and possibly a faster heartbeat.
But, to emphasize the theme of mock leisure in this stanza, he slows things down by using the
word "show," which rhymes with the "slow" of a previous line.

Line 20: He then extends the "heart" metaphor in line 20 by introducing the word rate – as in
heart rate, another kind of motion. We can’t neglect the sense of "rate" which means "price"
or "cost." With this pun, he slyly accuses her of wanting to sell her love for compliments –
which brings us back to the running away thing.
 Lines 45-46: The final lines of the poem employ a variety of fun techniques. The simple imagery
of the word "sun," which makes us see yellow or orange or red as we read, combines with
personification to deepen the image. We see a red-orange blur, wearing fiery running shoes.
As you might suspect, Marvell’s ending flourish is even more sophisticated. The sun is also a
metaphor for time. Time is an abstract concept (while the sun is an object we can see). By
giving an abstract concept (time) human characteristics (running), the speaker personifies an
abstraction, and we are left with an image of a bizarre red-orange clock wearing tennis shoes,
trying to stay as far away from the speaker as possible.

2.b. How do the persona’s complaints (l. 7) and the lady's beauty relate to the Petrarchan
tradition studied?
The Metaphysical tend to poke fun at the super-serious way that other poets write about love
and God, preferring a more light-hearted approach to weighty matters.

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3. How do lines 21 and 22 introduce a shift of tone and ideas in the poem? Explain.
(Look up the significance of a flying chariot!)
And, then, he gives her a huge gigantic "BUT." Ouch. You see, the speaker hears something
behind him: "Time’s winged chariot," to be exact.

He’s being chased down by Time’s hybrid car!

He doesn’t say who’s driving, but we can assume it’s probably Time.

4. How are the “Deserts of vast eternity” (l. 24) different from the large expanses of
time quoted on lines 8-10, 13, 15, 16 and 17?
Then, he seems to have a hallucination.

Look, he tells the mistress, look at all this sand. The future is just endless sand.

We’re all going to die.

Love as something extraordinary everlasting that was similar to the sort of Petrarchan love
projected in renaissance sonnets. Sexual interest in her. Shifting tone, from timelessness we
move on to reality, ruled by time. This shift was from hyperbolically debiting a hole eternity.
Time force the persona to be aware to do something. From praising the lady to frightening the
lady, of her own death. Versus the enormous structure of time before explained, here there
are more desert, versus the beautiful rubies in exotic lands, we can see the idea of desert: lack
of life. Nothing grows in the desert. Negative notion.

5. Analyse the metaphor “marble vault” (l. 26). What dual significance can you attach to
it?
You sure won’t be able to hear my pretty song when you are in a "grave”. For centuries that
everything beautiful is going to disappear.

We have moved from that illusion to time bringing death and affecting the lady.

Marble: coldness of stone, death. Noble valuable beautiful material, important works of art.
Gods and goddesses represented in marble statues. Polite, white representation of beauty and
power. Metonymy for an architecture: burial place. Vault: female shape. Perfection and
coldness. Lady’s death body.

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6. How do the worms on line 27 evoke death entwined with something else?
This next part is even creepier.

The speaker tells the mistress that, in the grave, worms will have sex with her.

According to the line, she’s a virgin.

Song: here will be no echoing song, everything is gone in death. Metonymic of his gone love.
Phallic symbol (worms). Decaying rotting piece of shapeless body destructed by worms. Sex:
worms’ phallic symbol, rapping the lady. Honour is presented as something that will be
destroyed nevertheless, either with sex or disgustingly in the grave by these worms, therefore
virginity is ridiculed. It can be preserved for long but for nothing.

7. Observe how death is introduced in this part of the poem (find references in the
poem).

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Devour. TEMPUS EDAX: time eats you. DUST, ASHES, GRAVE: metonymic references to the
world remains of the body after death. Intertextual allusion to the bible and the funeral. Ashes
to ashes, dust to dust.

In the grave, her "quaint honour" will completely disintegrate.

According to The Norton Anthology of English Literature, "quaint" is a euphemism that means
"vagina."

So, he’s telling her that she can’t take her virginity with her into the afterlife and making icky
jokes about her vagina.

8. Where does beauty and youth step into the poem again? What aspect of it is
emphasized?
“Now therefore, while the youthful hue sits on thy skin like morning dew”. Dew can be shine,
pretty, but mostly it’s a short ration. Leaves, plant, from the first lights on the morning. Dew is
something ephemeral, very short. By now, implies quick movement. While the youthful
temporal references. Even before beauty are mentioned, the condition direction is introduced:
while. Heavy element of short duration, ephemeral.

Luckily, he leaves all that morbidity behind, and gives us the old "now, therefore." By this, the
speaker suggests that his argument is successful, and that he’s about to tell the mistress what
she should do, since his argument is so successful.

He kind of brings her back from the grave here. Just a minute ago, he imagines her dead in the
crypt, and, now, he tells her how young she is, and how her soul rushes around excitedly inside
her, leaking out through her pores.

"Transpire" has a few fun meanings that you can ponder.

The first is "to come to light."

The second is "to happen."

The third actually has to do with plants. If a plant "transpires," it loses water vapor through its
stomata (little pores on a plant's leaves), a crucial part of photosynthesis.
9. Consider these images: “instant fires” (l. 36), “devour” (l. 39), “Let us roll all our
strength and all / All our sweetness up into one ball” (ll. 41,42), “tear our pleasures with
rough strife” (l. 43). In the last part of a poem trying to convince the lady to give in to
the lover’s seduction, what element do these images introduce?
He is suggesting the physicality of sex. Very passionate. Devour: hugging, clothing, rolling,
effusive: love making as a really powerful thing and also suggest the idea of death he has the
reality of beauty youth passion now: he proposed the seduction and in this new argument he
says tempus edax, time consumes you. He suggests that they could reverse that, they would
eat each other: cannibalism. Reversal to the situation. There will be a way to reverse the time
eating.

Level 2
How it relates to the Petrarchan tradition?

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The lady was displaced. The lady is not interested in the lover’s declaration of love. The
persona complained about the pain in all Petrarchan poetry. The lady’s beauty is the same.

How are virginity, honour and death treated in the second part of the poem?
Virginity is ridiculed, something dew, to be destroyed by worms. Is reduced. Death is treated
as effect of time, destroys beauty and life, as an element that is used to pressure the lady into
accepting what the present moment allows. An argument to force the lady to yield to him.
Honour is also presented as something not immaterial or stable, ideas are infallible, but
honour is materialized, decay and rots, is being diminished from moral category to something
physical. Is presented as quaint, that refers to ridicule: criticism. Patronize value. The mockery
using quaint to qualify honour, seems as a pam to signify female genitals.

Analyse the speaker’s tone, and comparing it with the tone and images used in the first
and second part, consider:
How is the woman’s image treated throughout the poem?
In the first 20 lines, replicate Petrarchan values, ideal lover that has this platonic deep never-
ending spiritual love for her, who is image is priest, i evaluated and admired. He is objectifying
her. Then, he is ridiculed or mocked, from hyperbolic to horror: contemplating lady’s death
body: decay, worms. He is manipulating not just the lady but also her image using it to try to
achieve his purposes. Showing us nasty image, frightening idea to haste the lady to consider
beauty will disappear. Reinforce his arguments. He describes the lady’s death body being
raped by worms. He is manipulating her body. That show a credible sort of love. Her body
which is wat he wants, can be used by sexual satisfaction or as a rhetorical tool to women
argument, he can deploy of very subjective poem. When the persona disregarded virginity and
honour, he is reproducing something similar in the flea: apparently dealing with the love but
hen presenting changes of argument, colder ideas, that are meant to build reasons why the
lady should give in and lay with him. Here the lady’s taste as silent object of men desires.
Recipient of educate men, rhetorical flourishes. Displays verbal skills, trying to conquer them
or seduce them, to blow away women’s notions, ideas, morals, honour. To grant this man
satisfaction.

What conclusion can you get about the nature of his love?
Suggest love but he is trying to mean lust.
Andrew Marvell and To His Coy Mistress
To His Coy Mistress is Andrew Marvell's best known poem. It focuses on the lustful
desires of a man attempting to entice a female virgin, the mistress, into sexual intimacy.
The poem is a tour de force, and has come to be known as a seduction poem or carpe
diem (seize or pluck the day) poem. Wit, allusion and metaphor are all employed in what
is a syllogism - a logical argument - that can be summed up in a short phrase: Life is too
short, let's get it on before you and I decay.

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It was first published in 1681, in Miscellaneous Poems, three years after the death of
the author.
Marvell is known today as one of the metaphysical poets (alongside such names as
John Donne, Henry Vaughan, George Herbert and Richard Crashaw) because he
wrote on subjects such as man's place in the universe, existence, love and religion.
To His Coy Mistress is a clever, well structured poem, a dramatic monologue in effect,
the speaker progressing logically through the stages of persuasion in an effort to turn the
lady's head and heart.
He wants to deflower her before it's too late. Basically his argument goes like this:

 If they had all the time in the world at their disposal then everything would be fine
and he needn't have to press her for a sexual liason. But, hey, has she noted that
there's no time to lose?
 Before them is eternity, a vast desert where they'll both turn to dust and ashes in
the grave. Beauty will die. Not a very pleasant prospect. Lust turns to disgust. And
Time flies.
 Let's devour time before it devours us. The instinct drives birds of prey, why not
us; let's strike while the iron's hot, create a ball of passion and take on the sun.
As you can see, the argument builds up through the three sections of the poem, starting
off with the speaker's assertion that the lady's coyness (shyness, modesty) wouldn't be
deemed a moral crime if they had all the world in which to spend time together.
There then follows a series of potential scenarios laid out by the speaker to illustrate
exactly what he means. There is a relaxed tone to these lines, spiced with hyperbole
and allusion.
She, being of Indian descent perhaps, could go walking by the river Ganges in search
of rubies (in legend the river originates from a huge jujube tree near a hermitage
where stands some stairs made of rubies and corals).
Likewise, he, being from Hull in East Yorkshire, England, could go walking by the tidal
river Humber. Only he wouldn't be looking for precious stones, he'd be complaining -
perhaps unhappy with the distance between him and his lady.
And there would also be time, thousands of years, for him to admire her physical
beauty, her eyes, her breasts and so on.
Keeping regular rhyme and rhythm throughout, the poem culminates in what many
think is an alchemical climax of sorts, a coming together of male and female elements,
with the emphasis on a passionate fusion, strong enough to affect even the sun.

 In conclusion, To His Coy Mistress explores the realm of human mortality,

approaching the seriousness of this finite reality with humour, logic and
ironic reflection. Why let time get the upperhand when being pro-active
could bring fulfilment?
 Analysis of To His Coy Mistress
To His Coy Mistress has been rightly lauded as a small masterpiece of a poem, primarily
because it packs so much into a relatively small space. It manages to carry along on simple
rhyming couplets the complex passions of a male speaker, hungry for sexual liason with a
lady, before all devouring time swallows them up.

Lines 1 - 20

The argument begins with an appeal to the coy mistress based on the idea that, if time and
space were limitless, they could spend their days in leisure, she by the exotic Ganges river
for instance, he by the ebb and flow of the Humber.

Sex needn't be a priority in this fantasy world. The speaker's ironic tone even allows for his
love of the lady a decade before the old testament flood, and she could say no to his
advances up to the time when the Jews convert to Christianity - which would never ever
happen of course.

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 This tongue-in-cheek allusion to religious notions of the end of the world, plus the
underlying urges for physical intimacy, have been too much for certain Christian
groups and others in more modern times. They would like the poem to be banned
from being taught in school, claiming that it would negatively influence their children
and that it condones predatory male behaviour.
Years he would spend growing his love, like a vegetable grows slowly, rooted and strong,
in the earth. And he could bide his time admiring her physical beauty - her eyes, forehead,
breasts and other parts.

This imaginary scenario is a clever and slightly ludicrous set up. He is clearly in awe of her
body and totally wants her heart but because she refuses to comply he introduces this idea
of a timeless, boundless love. Time becomes a metaphor for love but is little more than a
limitless resource.

Lines 21 - 32

But all of the previous means nothing because the reality is that the clock is ticking louder
and louder. Time is flying. And then one day you find ten years have got behind you, no
one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun. Don't look over your shoulder. Don't
look ahead either because there is a vast desert - eternity.

The speaker's tone starts to alter, becoming more serious. The future isn't that bright - her
beauty will be lost in the sands of time - even worse, when she's dead and buried only the
worms will experience what he presently longs for. What a challenging image.

And there are some who think quaint honour is an obscure reference to the female private
parts (quaint was used as a noun in pre-Elizabethan times). He too will perish, consumed
by his own passion, nothing but a pile of ash.

The last couplet of this section is perhaps the most quoted and puts a seal on the
message: Let's make love while we're still alive.

Lines 33 - 46

The final part of this poem concentrates on the rational summing up of what's gone before.
Note the first two words: Now therefore,..it's as if the speaker is saying, Look I've given you
two quite valid reasons for you to succumb, consequently this final effort will make you see
sense.

Never has an adverb carried so much weight.

And the speaker has clearly thrown out the fantasies and wishes of the previous scenes.
Gone are space and time and death, in their place is the all-consuming present. Just look

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at the use of the word now (3 times in lines 33-38), suggesting that the speaker cannot wait
a second longer for his postponed fulfilment.

The emphasis is on the physical - skin, sport, roll and tear - the language being tinged with
aggression and forceful energy.

 Line 34 is controversial as many later versions change the word glew for dew whereas
in the original it is definitely glew. So the poet used this word to further the image of
youthfulness, as line 33 imparts. The word glew, now archaic, could be the old
fashioned word for today's glue but this wouldn't make sense in the context of the
couplet: Sits on thy skin like morning glue,; what makes better sense is to look for
variants of either glow or glee - we still say the skin glows but do not often say the skin
is happy. Her skin has a morning glow.
 As the lines progress the intensity increases, the passion starts to burn, and when the
images of two birds of prey emerge, devouring time (instead of the other way round)
the reader is surely taken beyond mere pleasures of the flesh.

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Some think the poet is using the symbols of alchemy to express the deep lying sexual
chemistry implied in the second unusual image, that of a ball of sweetness to signify the
union of male and female.

The iron gates could well be the barrier, the threshold, through which the speaker wishes to
emerge. He sets the imperative. If they come together then who knows what will happen?
Common sense and the logic of time will no longer dictate their lives.

To His Coy Mistress - Influences

Mortality and desire were popular themes with poets in the 17th century. Love, sex

and the need for offspring were all top priorities and with the life span much shorter

than it is in modern times, the need to act NOW before time ran out was seen as vital.

One clear influence on Marvell was William Shakespeare's poem Venus and Adonis.

Lines 95-96:

O pity, 'gan she cry, flint-hearted boy,

Tis but a kiss I beg, why art thou coy?

Further Analysis - Rhythm

Metre (Meter in USA)

This poem has a dominant 8 syllable, four beat rhythm to the majority of lines - iambic
tetrameter - but there are lines that deviate from this familiar, steady constant.

 First, the iambic tetrameter, for example, line 2 :

This coyness, lady, were no crime. (regular da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM)

 Then there is the three stressed ending to line 4:

To walk, and pass our long Love's day. (spondee at the end DUM-DUM)

 And the altered beat of lines 1 and 3:

Had we but world enough, and time (first foot is a trochee DUM-da)

We would sit down and think which way

And there are varied beats in lines 21/22 and 23/24.

These varied beats in certain lines tend to alter the pace and emphasis, and together with a
mix of punctuation, colons, semi-colons, commas and full stops, not forgetting enjambment
and repetition, makes the syntax particularly suitable for conveying a sense of momentum
and familiarity.

More Analysis of To His Coy Mistress

To His Coy Mistress is a 46 line single stanza, split into three sections. Some modern
versions available online show 3 distinct stanzas but the original is indeed one stanza with
indented lines at 21 and 33.

Reservados todos los derechos. No se permite la explotación económica ni la transformación de esta obra. Queda permitida la impresión en su totalidad.
Rhyme Scheme

The rhyming couplets are mostly full end rhyme, aabbccdd and so on, which shows a tight
knit relationship. Only lines 23/24 and 27/28 are imperfect - with slant
rhyme, lie/eternity and try/virginity.

Alliteration

There are several examples: we would, long Love's, An age at, love at lower, while thy
willing, Thus, though, Stand still, we will. Alliteration brings texture and altered phonics to
the line and challenges the reader.