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-chapt power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
The poem I have selected is To His Coy Mistress written by Andrew Marvell.
In the poem the poet attempts through argument to win over his coy lady. The poem has a clear intention with the subject and theme both being time.
To His Coy Mistress is a metaphysical poem, the over all structure is that of syllogism using logic to present an argument. There are three stanzas in the poem made up of two propositions and a conclusion.
In the first stanza the subject matter is shown as being time itself, the first line “Had we but world enough, and time,” meaning if we had unlimited time. The whole of the first stanza is based around the argument of “had we”. Space is introduced early in the first stanza by using different locations the lady being at the exotic Indian Ganges and himself at the Humber River which is a normal place for him to be. I think the extreme distance is used to show how different their attitudes are, he sees her reluctance as being a crime. Time is again mentioned as he says he would love her “ten years before the flood” which is obviously not actual time as the event was too long ago for either of them to have been present, he also says she may refuse him “till the conversion of the Jews” again an event that is highly unlikely to happen making an unmeasurable amount of time both events are biblical which adds a more serious tone the poem or a least makes the lady see the argument as more serious. The end of the first stanza is flattering the lady “an hundred years should go to praise thine eyes,” but not in a straightforward way, it is not realistic and is conditional upon having all the time in the world. The poet uses the conditional future – if they had enough time then this is what he would do and he feels and tells her she deserves that amount of attention to detail.
The second stanza starts by pointing out that they do not have endless time as it is “at my back” pushing them forward using “time’s winged chariot” to give time a physical image you can see and hear the beating wings as well as implying time flies. He looks into the future and points out that everyone will die, death is universal and the only place they are heading is the grave, the lady has gone from being very much alive in the first stanza to being dead in the grave and the only thing she will have with her is “that long preserved virginity” which will be taken anyway “worms shall try”. Also they will not be together as “none, I think, there do embrace”.
The final stanza is the present starting “now therefore” it is telling the lady what they should do now while she is young and has her looks and they are both passionate and in love. He intends to convince her now that the time is right and she is ready to consummate their relationship. He argues they should live now, carpe diem – seize the day. The poem ends saying they should take control and make time wait for them.
The rhyming scheme is aa, bb, cc, dd, ee etc. It rhymes equally and is easy to read except for the second stanza where incomplete rhyme is used - lie with eternity and try with virginity; this makes you take more notice as it deviates from the standard form used throughout the rest of the poem. There is a regular beat in the poem; each line follows an unstressed; stressed – iambic beat. “Had we but world enough, and time,” (de dum de dum de dum de dum) there is a light sound followed by a heavy sound. The norm for an iambic rhythm is to have ten syllables in each line but this poem has only eight. The rhythm is slow in the first stanza but begins to speed up in the second stanza and is changed by having the stress on the first syllable “De⁄serts⁄ of⁄ vast⁄ e⁄ter⁄nit⁄y.” this draws attention to this particular part of the poem. The final stanza speeds up even more giving the impression that he is trying to hurry his lady to make a decision and gives a similar rhythm to the act itself.
Repetition is used in the final stanza the word “now” appears frequently to reinforce the point the poet is trying to make that the time is right for both of them. There is also the use of positive words – youthful hue and morning due the effect is to emphasise images of passion to the lady in an attempt to make her feel passionate and give in to his argument.
Bibliography
Analysing poetry (class handout)
