Andrew Marvell: To His Coy Mistress

Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” is a metaphysical love-poem. It is about a lover’s earnest appeal for responding for more active participation in the game of courtship, who is shy and reluctant. If they had infinite time and space at their disposal the lover could wait and her coyness would not have been a crime. Then they could walk together collecting rubbles by Ganges in India or would stroll along the river Humber. He might begin to love her before the time of the Great Biblical Flood and continue it till the end of the world on Doomsday. She could also refuse his love till the time of the conversion of the Jews into Christianity and his love also would grow slowly and become vaster than an empire. If the lover could, he would praise the beauty of different parts of her body for hundreds or thousands of years. But time is passing fast. Death is following them. Time will destroy her beauty, chastity, honor and love and reduce them to the dust. So the lover argues that he cannot wait indefinitely for the love of the lady-love. He urges that they should enjoy their physical love as long as they are young full of vigor and bloom. He wants the flaming, violent and forceful love-making like that of the birds of prey. He wants the physical barriers that prevent them from the complete merging of the bodies of the lovers. It is by this process that they will conquer time. Time will pass imperceptively if they can engross them in the enjoyment of love.
Critical Appreciation:
The poem is based on the philosophy of carpe diem which means “enjoy yourself when you are young”. It has almost all the characteristics of the metaphysical love poetry. It is an argumentative poem based on reasoning. A profound emotion stimulates the poet’s power of intellectual analysis and argument. The poet builds his poem in three phrases, each representing a step in the argument: first the supposition, then necessity to reject it and lastly the consequences of rejecting it. It is also a dramatic poem because the presence of the woman is well felt in her absence. The poem is a subtle blend of wit and irony. There are metaphysical conceits, hyperboles. They are noticeable in the descriptions of the lovers’ walking along the Ganges or Humber, and in the poet’s praising the beauty of the Lady-love. The whole poem is shot with strange and sensuous passion. The verses run easily and harmoniously. All these features have made the poem a masterpiece of the metaphysical poetry.
More information:
http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/marvell/
http://www.netpoets.com/classic/043000.htm