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
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(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
5. The image of the sun appears in both “To the Virgins” (line 5) and “To His Coy Mistress” (line 45). How does each poet use the reference to the sun? How would you paraphrase the last two lines of Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”?
Comparing Andrew Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress and Robert Herrick’s To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
The poem’s structure as a sonnet allows the speaker’s feelings of distrust and heartache to gradually manifest themselves as the poem’s plot progresses. Each quatrain develops and intensifies the speaker’s misery, giving the reader a deeper insight into his convoluted emotions. In the first quatrain, the speaker advises his former partner to not be surprised when she “see[s] him holding [his] louring head so low” (2). His refusal to look at her not only highlights his unhappiness but also establishes the gloomy tone of the poem. The speaker then uses the second and third quatrains to justify his remoteness; he explains how he feels betrayed by her and reveals how his distrust has led him
Within To His Coy Mistress we see the manipulation in which the speaker uses for his own benefit through the personification of time, ‘Had we but World enough and Time’ expressing, through the personification of ‘Time’, how he would love the potential lover and wouldn’t mind her initial rejection if time was an endless matter. This attempt of flattery, seen
‘To His Coy Mistress’ was written by Andrew Marvell (1621-1678). The poem is a metaphysical poem, which was mostly used in the seventeenth century and was classed as a highly intellectual type of poetry and mainly expressed the complexities of love and life; just as this poem is. In brief the poem is about seizing every opportunity in life and not caring about the past or future. In other words ‘seize the day’. The poem also explores the nature of seduction.
In “To His Coy Mistress” it’s about a guy trying to conquer the love of a mistress. He tells her how much time he will wait for her and his love will endure forever as long as she is with him. Later the tone changes and it’s when carpe diem takes place. He starts to say that they don’t have all the time in the world and that one day all this will end. He points out that beauty one day will end and that she should take the advantage of being with him now that she is young and beautiful and not waiting till she’s old and wrinkly. Also he mentions her virginity and says that she should have sexual intercourse before she dies because if she dies as a virgin it’s the same thing as doing it while being alive because worms will still get inside her and eat all her remains. He wants to be with her, and would’ve waited a long time to get what he wanted, but since they don’t have all the time in the world and one day will die he wants
6. The theme of this poem is about love but particularly the expression of love. The speaker can seem cruel to someone who does not understand him or what he is trying to say but he is expressing his love to his mistress and him knowing his true intentions is all that matters. The speaker expresses his love towards his mistress in the way that he wants or feels most comfortable with. The purpose of the poem is to show that love can be expressed in many ways because there is no specific way to do it.
In the blank space before the third stanza we infer that the woman has killed the flea. He is upset at the woman because she killed the flea and wants to know how this flea was guilty. The tone of the poem changes in this stanza because now, he is chastising her for her sins. He is even cool and harsh when he says, “Just so much honor, when thou yield’st to me, /Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee” (26-27) He then concludes by explaining that having sex with him would be just as trivial as killing the flea.
The poem, “For That He Looked Not upon Her” by George Gascoigne exemplifies how the speaker suffered from love, something that many people believe one should feel positive about. The title delivers a despairing tone by allowing the audience to believe that the speaker can no longer look the woman he loved in the eye. Conflicting with the despairing tone, the speaker develops a complex attitude with the use of structure, metaphors, diction, and desire.
Sex described in this poem is between two people who are not in love, and it’s vividly elaborated throughout the poem. Olds brings foreplay, tenderness, and
Like every marketed love story out there, the poem starts off with two souls who secretly admire each other, yet are too afraid to admit it. In a society that at that time would quite possibly think
The title "To His Coy Mistress" implies a certain falseness as the word coy is almost an insincere form of modest, it indicates that this mistress were indeed not coy rather falsely coy in order to gain assurance of his feelings towards her for her own validation. The first line "Had we but world enough, and time, This coyness lady were no crime." introduces the theme of time and lack of a crucial theme in the poem, the lover also accuses this coyness of being criminal by saying "HAD we but world enough and time, this coyness lady were no crime" implying that they do not have time therefore this coyness is a crime, this is clever use of irony which is also a constant theme throughout the poem. Marvell also uses soft alliteration such as "long loves" to lull the reader into believing his intentions honourable, he uses flattery all throughout the first section of the poem though he changes his tactics throughout the poem. The lover tries to create the image of himself as a committed patient lover with promises of waiting for her if she should travel to the "Indian Ganges" without complaint and
Andrew Marvell writes an elaborate poem that not only speaks to his coy mistress but also to the reader. He suggests to his coy mistress that time is inevitably ticking and that he (the speaker) wishes for her to act upon his wish and have a sexual relationship. Marvell simultaneously suggest to the reader that he/she must act upon their desires, to hesitate no longer and ³seize the moment?before time expires. Marvell uses a dramatic sense of imagery and exaggeration in order to relay his message to the reader and to his coy mistress. The very first two lines of the poem suggest that it would be fine for him and his mistress to have a slow and absorbing relationship but there simply isn¹t enough
Finally, the speaker compares himself to the glowing remnants of a fire, which lies on the ashes of the logs that once enabled it to burn. In contrast, the love between the speaker and his beloved remains strong even though he may not live long. Here the speaker employs another kind of figurative language, the paradox, to emphasize that their love, unlike the fire, is unalterable and everlasting.
The use of connotative words in this piece is the foundation of this poem and it provides an idea of what this poem is going to be about. In the first stanza he describes the woman as “lovely in her bones,” showing that her beauty is more than skin deep comparing her virtues to a goddess of “only gods should speak.” In the second stanza, the reader can see and feel the love between the two people. The woman taught him how to "Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand," showing that she was the teacher in the relationship and taught him things he thought he never needed to know. The speaker shows how when they are together, she was “the sickle” and he was “the rake” showing that this woman taught him what love is.