Summary And Analysis Of To His Coy Mistress By Andrew Marvell | To His Coy Mistress Short Notes

The Summary Of To His Coy Mistress

The poem is spoken by a male lover to his beloved wife as an attempt to convince her to sleep with him. The speaker argues that the timidity and hesitation of the Lady would be acceptable if both had "the world and time". But because they are finite human beings, he thinks they should enjoy their sensual lifestyle for their duration.

Summary And Analysis Of To His Coy Mistress By Andrew Marvell 

He told the lady that her beauty, as well as her "long-preserved virginity," would become food only for worms, unless she gave herself to herself while she lived. Rather than preserving all the great ideals of chastity and virtue, the speaker said that lovers should "roll all our strength and all our sweetness into a ball." He alludes to their physical bodies meeting in act of making love.

Marvell wrote this poem in the classical tradition of a Latin love elegy, in which the lecturer praises his mistress or lover by the motif of the carpe diem, or "seizes the day". The poem also reflects the tradition of the erotic coat of arms, in which A poet constructs elaborate images of her lover's beauty by cutting her body into parts. Its form of verse consists of couplets rhymed in iambic tetrameter, such as AA, BB, CC, etc.

Analysis Of To His Coy Mistress By Andrew Marvell

The speaker begins by building a thorough and elaborate vanity of the many things he "will" do to honor the lady properly, if the two lovers had enough time. It poses impossible periods of time during which both could play parry games. He claims to be able to love her ten years before the biblical flood told in the Book of Genesis, while the Lady could refuse her advances until the "conversion of the Jews", which refers to the day of the Christian judgment prophesied for the End of Times in the Book of Revelations of the New Testament.

The speaker then uses the metaphor of a "plant love" to suggest a slow and steady growth that could increase to vast proportions. This would allow him to praise his lady's features-eyes, forehead, breasts, and heart-in increments of hundreds or even thousands of years, which he says the lady clearly deserves because of her superior quality. He assures the Lady that he will never value her at a "lower rate" than she deserves, at least in an ideal world where time is unlimited.
Marvell praises the beauty of the lady by completing her individual traits using Petrarchan love poetry techniques of the 15th and 16th centuries. Petrarchian poetry is based on the rarity and distance of the amorous woman, transforming it into an inaccessible object. In this poem, however, the speaker uses only these devices to suggest that the distance of his lover is foolish, for they do not have the unlimited time necessary for the speaker to praise the Lady enough.

The mood of the poem changes in line 21, when the speaker asserts that "the winged chariot of time" is always close. The speaker's behavior changes from a recognition of the unlimited virtue of the Lady to insist on the radical limits of their time as embodied beings. Once dead, he assures the Lady, her virtues and beauty will be in the grave with her body as it turns into dust. Similarly, the speaker imagines that his lust is reduced to ashes, while the chance for the two lovers to join life will be lost forever.

The third and final section of the poem turns into a general plea and a demonstration of poetic prowess in which the speaker tries to win the Lady. He compares the Lady's skin to a vibrant layer of morning dew that is animated by the fires of his soul and encourages him to "train" with him "while we can." Time devours everything, Speaker acknowledges, but he says nevertheless that Both can, in fact, turn tables on time. They can become "birds of prey lovers" who actively consume the time they have through passionate love.