To
his coy mistress
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,
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the flood,
And you should, if you please,
refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews,
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead
gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your
heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time’s winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity,
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 honor turns 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-chapped
power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough
strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
Andrew
Marvell- Summary of To His Coy Mistress
To
His Coy Mistress is
Andrew Marvell's best known poem. It focuses on the lustful desires of a man
attempting to entice a female virgin, the mistress, into sexual intimacy. Wit,
allusion and metaphor are all employed in what is a syllogism - a logical
argument - that can be summed up in a short phrase: Life is too short, let's
get it on before you and I decay. It was first published in 1681, three years
after the death of the author. Marvell is known today as one of the
metaphysical poets (alongside such names as John Donne, Henry Vaughan, George
Herbert and Richard Crashaw) because he wrote on subjects such as man's place
in the universe, existence, love and religion. To His Coy Mistress is
a clever, well-structured poem, a dramatic monologue in effect, the speaker
progressing logically through the stages of persuasion in an effort to turn the
lady's head and heart. He wants to deflower her before it's too late. Basically
his argument goes like this: If they had all the time in the world at their
disposal then everything would be fine and he needn't have to press her for a
sexual liaison. But, has she noted that there's no time to lose?
Before
them is eternity, a vast desert where they'll both turn to dust and ashes in
the grave. Beauty will die. Not a very pleasant prospect. Lust turns to
disgust. And Time flies.
Let's
devour time before it devours us. The instinct drives birds of prey, why not
us; let's strike while the iron's hot, create a ball of passion and take on the
sun. As you can see, the argument builds up through the three sections of the
poem, starting off with the speaker's assertion that the lady's coyness
(shyness, modesty) wouldn't be deemed a moral crime if they had all the world
in which to spend time together. There then follows a series of potential
scenarios laid out by the speaker to illustrate exactly what he means. There is
a relaxed tone to these lines, spiced with hyperbole and allusion. She, being
of Indian descent perhaps, could go walking by the river Ganges in search of
rubies (in legend the river originates from a huge jujube tree near a hermitage
where stands some stairs made of rubies and corals).Likewise, he, being from
Hull in East Yorkshire, England, could go walking by the tidal river Humber.
Only he wouldn't be looking for precious stones, he'd be complaining - perhaps
unhappy with the distance between him and his lady. And there would also be
time, thousands of years, for him to admire her physical beauty, her eyes, her
breasts and so on. Keeping regular rhyme and rhythm throughout, the poem
culminates in what many think is an alchemical climax of sorts, a coming
together of male and female elements, with the emphasis on a passionate fusion,
strong enough to affect even the sun. In conclusion, To His Coy Mistress
explores the realm of human mortality, approaching the seriousness of this
finite reality with humor, logic and ironic reflection. Why let time get the
upper hand when being pro-active could bring fulfillment? To His Coy
Mistress has been rightly lauded as a small masterpiece of a poem,
primarily because it packs so much into a relatively small space. It manages to
carry along on simple rhyming couplets the complex passions of a male speaker,
hungry for sexual liaison with a lady, before all devouring time swallows them
up.
Lines 1 - 20
The
argument begins with an appeal to the coy mistress based on the idea that, if
time and space were limitless, they could spend their days in leisure, she by
the exotic Ganges river for instance, he by the ebb and flow of the Humber. Sex
needn't be a priority in this fantasy world. The speaker's ironic tone even
allows for his love of the lady a decade before the Old Testament flood, and
she could say no to his advances up to the time when the Jews convert to
Christianity - which would never ever happen of course.
This
tongue-in-cheek allusion to religious notions of the end of the world, plus the
underlying urges for physical intimacy, has been too much for certain Christian
groups and others in more modern times. They would like the poem to be banned
from being taught in school, claiming that it would negatively influence their
children and that it condones predatory male behavior.
Years
he would spend growing his love, like a vegetable grows slowly, rooted and
strong, in the earth. And he could bide his time admiring her physical beauty -
her eyes, forehead, breasts and other parts. This imaginary scenario is a
clever and slightly ludicrous set up. He is clearly in awe of her body and
totally wants her heart but because she refuses to comply he introduces this
idea of a timeless, boundless love. Time becomes a metaphor for love but is
little more than a limitless resource.
Lines 21 - 32
But
all of the previous means nothing because the reality is that the clock is
ticking louder and louder. Time is flying. And then one day you find ten years
have got behind you, no one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.
Don't look over your shoulder. Don't look ahead either because there is a vast
desert - eternity. The speaker's tone starts to alter, becoming more serious.
The future isn't that bright - her beauty will be lost in the sands of time -
even worse, when she's dead and buried only the worms will experience what he
presently longs for. What a challenging image. And there are some who
think quaint honor is an obscure reference to the female
private parts (quaint was used as a noun in pre-Elizabethan times). He too will
perish, consumed by his own passion, nothing but a pile of ash. The last
couplet of this section is perhaps the most quoted and puts a seal on the
message: Let's make love while we're still alive.
Lines 33 - 46
The
final part of this poem concentrates on the rational summing up of what's gone
before. Note the first two words: Now therefore. It’s as if the
speaker is saying, Look I've given you two quite valid reasons for you to
succumb, consequently this final effort will make you see sense.
Never
has an adverb carried so much weight. And the speaker has clearly thrown out
the fantasies and wishes of the previous scenes. Gone are space and time and
death, in their place is the all-consuming present. Just look at the use of the
word now (3 times in lines 33-38), suggesting that the speaker cannot wait a
second longer for his postponed fulfillment.
The
emphasis is on the physical - skin, sport, roll and tear - the language being
tinged with aggression and forceful energy. Line 34 is controversial as many
later versions change the word glew for dew whereas
in the original it is definitely glew. So the poet used this word to further
the image of youthfulness, as line 33 imparts. The word glew, now archaic,
could be the old fashioned word for today's glue but this wouldn't make sense
in the context of the couplet: Sits on thy skin like morning
glue,; what makes better sense is to look for variants of either glow
or glee - we still say the skin glows but do not often say the skin is happy.
Her skin has a morning glow. As the lines progress the intensity increases, the
passion starts to burn, and when the images of two birds of prey emerge,
devouring time (instead of the other way round) the reader is surely taken
beyond mere pleasures of the flesh. Some think the poet is using the symbols of
alchemy to express the deep lying sexual chemistry implied in the second
unusual image, that of a ball of sweetness to signify the union of male and
female. The iron gates could well be the barrier, the threshold, through which
the speaker wishes to emerge. He sets the imperative. If they come together
then who knows what will happen? Common sense and the logic of time will no
longer dictate their lives.
To His Coy Mistress - Influences
Mortality
and desire were popular themes with poets in the 17th century. Love, sex and
the need for offspring were all top priorities and with the life span much
shorter than it is in modern times, the need to act NOW before time ran out was
seen as vital.This poem has a dominant 8 syllable, four beat rhythm to the
majority of lines - iambic tetrameter - but there are lines that deviate from
this familiar, steady constant.
Questions To Ask - To His Coy
Mistress
1. Is it right for a man to demand
sexual pleasure from a woman?
2. Should this poem be banned from
classrooms?
3. What about a feminist perspective
on this poem?
4. Which is more important, love or
lust, and how do we balance the two?
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