To his coy mistress

• Context


  ☆Patriarchal society

  ☆Traditional belief that Jews would convert to Christianity at the end of the world

  ☆Marvell was born in Yorkshire in 1621

  ☆A time of great political unrest

  ☆His poetry often used humour and satire

  ☆Metaphysical poets directly o4pposed cavalier poets

  ☆Restoration period - restoring of the monarchy
• role of women


  ☆Sensual element of coyness

  ☆Body described in the imagery

  ☆Considered proper for women to hold back and act disinterested and chaste

  ☆Silent

  ☆Obedient

  ☆The speaker is trying to convince his mistress to seize the day and express their love for each other in having sex
• Form and Structure


  ☆structure

  ☆Persuasive argument - if, but, therefore

  ☆Iambic tetrameter

  ☆Contreblazon - negating female body parts

  ☆Dramatic monologue speaking to an assumed audience, poet adopts a persona

  ☆Literary blazon - catalogues the physical attributes of a subject, usually female, blazon compares parts of the female body to jewels, for example

  ☆Rhyming couplets to represent the couple

  ☆Structurally, the poem darkens as it proceeds
• Metaphysical poetry


  ☆Rhetorical language

  ☆Flexibility of rhythm and meter

  ☆Interlinking physical and philosophical

  ☆Use of conceit

  ☆Sense of mortality

  ☆Argumentative

  ☆Clever intellectual arguments
• Title


  ☆Third person - detaches poet from his speaker

  ☆Coy - purposeful connotation

  ☆Contextual - belongs to him
• Had we but world enough and time,

  This coyness, lady, were no crime.

  ☆end stopped line slows the pace and emphasises what they would do if they had enough time

  ☆'coyness' intentional shyness

  ☆collective pronoun

  ☆move at a leisurely metrical pace

  ☆In Marvell's treatment of the carpe diem theme ("Had we but world enough and time/This coyness, lady, were no crime"), the coyness of his adored is of course the springboard for more explicit and excessive erotic fantasies

  ☆carpe diem
• We would sit down, and think which way

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

  ☆'long love's' 'which way' 'we would'- alliteration further slows the pace

  ☆enjambment shows the flow of time
• Thou by the Indian Ganges' side

  Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide


  ☆connotations of red + passion
• Of Humber would complain. I would

  Love you ten years before the flood,


  ☆biblical reference

  ☆emphasis on time

  ☆the speaker shifts to images of swiftly passing time to show his love that they in fact do not have the time to love at this slow rate
• And you should, if you please, refuse

  Till the conversion of the Jews.


  ☆Marvell evokes a specifically divine or eternal frame

  ☆Believed to happen at the end of the world
• My vegetable love should grow

  Vaster than empires and more slow;


  ☆Phallic imagery to describe his sexual arousal

  ☆Natural love

  ☆Sensual imagery

  ☆Empires take a long time to build, hyperbolic language in 'more slow'

  ☆Complex and ambiguous metaphors
• 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;


  ☆Undermined by the first couplet

  ☆blazon

  ☆ hyperbolic language
• 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.


  ☆Using language to flatter her

  ☆Direct address

  ☆Persuasive nature

  ☆Hyperbolic language weaved throughout
• But at my back I always hear

  Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near;

  ☆'but' signalling a turn in the syllogistic argument - makes the transition rom eternity to the present

  ☆imagery of time flying away

  ☆death is inevitable

  ☆sense of mortality

  ☆theme of carpe diem

  ☆personified time as the enemy
• And yonder all before us lie

  Deserts of vast eternity.


  ☆Imagery of life being short yet death being endless

  ☆ no mention of any Christian afterlife

  ☆no sense that the love will endure beyond the grave
• Thy beauty shall no more be found;

  Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound


  ☆Beauty fades with time

  ☆Beauty is the only power women have over men

  ☆Exposes the patriarchal society - women are objectified and sexualised

  ☆Seizing the day and making use of your looks now

  ☆Connotations of 'marble vault' - dark imagery, grave, macabre, dark humour

  ☆ macabre imagery
• My echoing song; then worms shall try

  That long-preserved virginity,


  ☆images of decay

  ☆imagery of death is not unusual in carpe diem poems

  ☆emphasis on seizing the day, and doing it now

  ☆alarming imagery to persuade the woman
• And your quaint honour turn to dust,

  And into ashes all my lust;

  ☆after death life does not endure

  ☆connotations of 'ashes' -- burning passion extinguished
• The grave's a fine and private place,

  But none, I think, do there embrace.

  ☆Mundane language to describe the grave

  ☆All relationships end at death
• Now therefore, while the youthful hue

  Sits on thy skin like morning dew,


  ☆'Now' illustrates the final stage in the syllogistic argument

  ☆final appeal to the mistress

  ☆lack of dental sounds - seduction - quickening pace

  ☆sensual imagery - rupture of sensual desire

  ☆effective simile as dew disappears as the day advances like her youthful appearance as the days pass

  ☆ semantic field of time
• And while thy willing soul transpires

  At every pore with instant fires,


  ☆natural overcoming of passion

  ☆uncontrollable
• Now let us sport us while we may,

  And now, like amorous birds of prey,


  ☆lustful tone

  ☆simile

  ☆connoting the sexual desire

  ☆should not deny their primal instincts

  ☆animalistic, barely contained desires

  ☆animalistic imagery of devouring time

  ☆sibilance - aural quality linking to the idea of sin

  ☆sense of urgency - now

  ☆warning tone - unromantic imagery

  ☆ their is vigour, even violence in Marvell's depiction of sex

  ☆ short vowel sounds
• 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,


  ☆ sense of momentum and violence

  ☆ ball -- image of motion, the two have become one
• And tear our pleasures with rough strife

  Through the iron gates of life:


  ☆using their passion to free themselves from time

  ☆'devour' 'tear' violent language

  ☆ strong sense of momentum
• Thus, though we cannot make our sun

  Stand still, yet we will make him run.


  ☆Traditional belief that the sun orbited the Earth

  ☆They will win over time if they seize the day

  ☆Taking control of time through their love manipulating time

  ☆Conceit

  ☆The speaker completes his argument

  ☆ their love making will affect their perceptions so that the sun and the world will change