preview

To His Coy Mistress By Andrew Marvel

Good Essays

As I read To His Coy Mistress; by Andrew Marvell, I ponder on the meaning of the poem. When I first read the poem I came to understand it to be about a man deeply in love with a women and he wanted nothing more to let her know of his love before he died. Now after reading A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature, by Wilfred Guerin, Earle Labor, Lee Morgan, Jeanne C. Reesman, and John R. Willingham, I now see two different meanings of the poem. As I still believe my first impressions to be true in my way, I have also come to understand a different meaning in the poem as well.
Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk and pass our long love’s day. (1-4)
As we begin the poem the speaker is speaking about time, and only if they had enough time they would be able to sit around and thinking about things to do, where to go and just walk all day long. He speaks about his Mistress as a shy or bashful lady and if they had the time there would be no crime. A crime of what? A crime of love? Think of when the poem was written, and think that he had a mistress that he was in love with, and the …show more content…

(21-24) Here he speaks about time. Speaking that time is coming at them, that at some point they will both be dead, and there will more no more time. When he speaks about the “Deserts of vast eternity” he speaks about the future and how the sand is nothing more than a hallucination. Time that isn’t there, but he knows that death follows us all. The poem continues with the speaker trying to convince the mistress to have sex with him. However, he doesn’t do it in the most flirtatious way, but more ill-mannered.
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity,
And your quaint honor turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust:
The graves a fine and private

Get Access