Metaphysical Love Poems

Authors Avatar

What do you find interesting about the ways in which love and desire are explored in these three poems?

In ‘The Fair Singer’ Andrew Marvell describes a girl he has seen but has not necessarily met unlike in his other poem ‘To His Coy Mistress’ in which he writes to his lover.

Throughout the poem Marvell uses surprising imagery as he portrays his love with military metaphors, for example in the first line, ‘To make a final conquest of all me,’ the word conquest is usually used to describe a battle or an attack. There is an example of military connection in each line of the first stanza. He is trying to show how beauty can be dangerous.

The poet then uses personification, ‘Love did compose so sweet an enemy’ this shows love as his foe and that he does not necessarily want to fall in love, this is also another example of military imagery.

‘Joining themselves in fatal harmony:’ this is an example of oxymoron, fatal meaning deadly and harmony being peaceful.

In the second stanza Marvell states that he could resist one good quality, ‘I could have fled from one but singly fair:’ for instance if the woman was only pretty or if she only had a good voice but the combination is ‘deadly’ for him.

‘Breaking the curled trammels of her hair,’ Here, Marvell has used the word trammels to describe the woman’s hair; this is an odd choice of words but it adds to the effect and carries on the trend using military imagery. It is as though he is caught in a net, her hair.

The poet then suggests that she is controlling him, like a siren, ‘Whose subtle art invisibly can wreathe My fetters of the very air I breathe?’ her ‘subtle art’ is her singing voice and she is astounding him and taking his breath away with her ‘fetters’, which literally means chains but here it describes her voice as strong in, once again, a surprising use of imagery.

In the final stanza, Marvell shows that he has given up hope and has let his love overcome him. He gives excuses to justify himself falling in love with this woman.

He once more tells us that because she has two beautiful qualities, she is irresistible, ‘Where victory might hang in equal choice, But all resistance against her is vain,’

Here, rather than telling us that love is the trouble as in the last two stanzas, he tells us that she is the problem.

Join now!

In the final line the poet mentions the sun as in the other two poems, ‘She having both the wind and sun.’ although here the sun represents the woman’s eyes, instead of actually the sun.


Andrew Marvell's ‘To His Coy Mistress’ is trying to convince his
reluctant girlfriend, 'His Coy Mistress', to love him, It uses a different style than the other poem, although it keeps rhyming couplets: 'Had we but world enough, and time, This coyness, lady, were no crime.’ It also uses three separate stanzas like the other two poems but it uses irregular sentence length. The ...

This is a preview of the whole essay