To His Coy Mistress: This Seventeenth Century poem by Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) is a
To His Coy Mistress: This Seventeenth Century poem by Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) is a "carpe diem" ("Seize the day") poem. Its theme is that life is short and time is passing. The persona takes the loved one to task for not yielding to his persuasions to make love to him. It is another poem about power. The woman is holding power over the man by refusing his entreaties. This kind of poem was very popular in Marvel's time. It does not necessarily describe a real situation.
In the first part of the poem, the persona complains that if time were in plentiful supply, the woman's modest shyness would not be wrong. She could go to the River Ganges in India, a very exotic place, and celebrate her virginity ("rubies" are symbols of preserved virginity), while he would lament her loss beside the Humber, a far less attractive place. Marvell came from Hull, which stands on the Humber, so would know it well. In Hull, outside the Church of the Holy Trinity, is a statue of Marvell with these lines from the poem written on its plinth.
It was believed that "the flood" would never happen again, because, after Noah's Flood, God promised that there would be no more and put a rainbow in the sky as a reminder of this (See Genesis c. 9, v. 12) and the Conversion of the Jews was expected to happen at the end of the world, so in saying that he would love her and she would refuse before these things came to pass, he is saying they would go on forever.
His love would grow, like a vegetable, but more slowly, bigger and bigger, filling ...
This is a preview of the whole essay
It was believed that "the flood" would never happen again, because, after Noah's Flood, God promised that there would be no more and put a rainbow in the sky as a reminder of this (See Genesis c. 9, v. 12) and the Conversion of the Jews was expected to happen at the end of the world, so in saying that he would love her and she would refuse before these things came to pass, he is saying they would go on forever.
His love would grow, like a vegetable, but more slowly, bigger and bigger, filling the whole earth. He would spend a century admiring her eyes and forehead (once thought a particularly attractive feminine feature); two centuries on each of her breasts; thirty millennia to the rest of her body, an age for each one of the parts - delicately, he refrains from mentioning the more intimate ones by name - and the last one for her heart, when she had finally revealed it. Her beauty deserves this and he would not value her at any less than this.
The But at the beginning of line 21 introduces a far more serious tone as the persona, at the very centre of the poem, chillingly and unforgettably reminds the loved one of the inevitable passing of time and the coming of death:
"But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near:
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity."
Until now, the tone has been flattering, if exasperated, but now it becomes frightening and horrific. Death is a series of The bleak metaphor for death, "deserts of vast eternity," sets the mood. In the marble tomb, the loved one's beauty will be lost to decay and corruption, his voice will not be heard, and her virginity, now so carefully preserved, will be lost anyway, but to worms. The worm is a phallic symbol, so the image is quite revolting. Similarly, "quaint", beside its modern meaning of 'old fashioned, but attractive', also meant something like, 'too fussy', which he feels she is being, as well as being another word for the female sexual organ. The words, "dust" and "ashes" echo the phrase in the funeral service, "ashes to ashes, dust to dust". Her virtue will have crumbled to dust; his lust will be burnt out and will have become ashes. The grave may well be a place where one is not disturbed, but one cannot embrace one's loved one there either.
The third part of the poem begins on line 33 with the word, "Now". He is spelling out the consequence of his argument. There is no time to waste. We can tell he assumes she has been convinced by his argument, because he returns from using singular pronouns - "I, me, thine, thy, you, your" - to first person plural ones - "we" - which he previously used only in lines 1 and 3. They should, while her beauty still has its youthful softness and her passion its "instant fires" (which contrast with the "ashes" of his burnt out lust in the last section), enjoy their love to the full, hunting down time to "devour" and take pleasure in it, rather than succumbing to its slow but inevitable erosion of their being. The image of the birds of prey continues as they "tear our pleasures" the flesh of the prey they have hunted, even s they pass through the "iron gates" of life. Time is now seen as their prison, but one which they can defy by embracing the pleasure of one another. They cannot make time still, as Joshua discovered in the Book of Judges (c. 10, v 12-13) and Zeus discovered in Greek mythology, but they can ensure they enjoy its passing and "make him run". They must, as we said at the beginning, "Seize the day".
