To His Coy Mistress PDF

Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com To His Coy Mistress POEM TEXT 42 Our sweetness up into one ball, 43 And tear our pleasures with rough st...

Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com To His Coy Mistress POEM TEXT 42 Our sweetness up into one ball, 43 And tear our pleasures with rough strife 1 Had we but world enough and time, 44 Through the iron gates of life: 2 This coyness, lady, were no crime. 45 Thus, though we cannot make our sun 3 We would sit down, and think which way 46 Stand still, yet we will make him run. 4 To walk, and pass our long love’s day. 5 Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side 6 Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide SUMMARY 7 Of Humber would complain. I would 8 Love you ten years before the flood, If we had all the time in the world, your prudishness wouldn't 9 And you should, if you please, refuse be a problem. We would sit together and decide how to spend the day. You would walk by the river Ganges in India and find 10 Till the conversion of the Jews. rubies; I would walk by the river Humber in England and write 11 My vegetable love should grow my poems. I would love you from the very start of time, even 12 Vaster than empires and more slow; before the Biblical Flood; you could refuse to consummate our 13 An hundred years should go to praise relationship all the way until the apocalypse. My slow-growing 14 Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze; love would gradually become bigger than the largest empires. I 15 Two hundred to adore each breast, would spend a hundred years praising your eyes and gazing at 16 But thirty thousand to the rest; your forehead and two hundred years on each of your breasts. I 17 An age at least to every part, would dedicate thirty thousand years to the rest of your body 18 And the last age should show your heart. and give an era of human history to each part of you. In the final age, your heart would reveal itself. Lady, you deserve this kind 19 For, lady, you deserve this state, of dedication—and I don't want to accept any lesser kind of 20 Nor would I love at lower rate. love. 21 But at my back I always hear But I am always aware of time, the way it flies by. For us, the 22 Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near; future will be a vast, unending desert for all of time. Your 23 And yonder all before us lie beauty will be lost. In the grave, my songs in praise of you will 24 Deserts of vast eternity. no longer be heard. And worms will take the virginity you so 25 Thy beauty shall no more be found; carefully protected during life. Your honor will turn to dust and 26 Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound my desire will turn to ashes. The grave may be a quiet, private 27 My echoing song; then worms shall try place—but no one has sex there. 28 That long-preserved virginity, Therefore, while your beauty sits right at the surface of your 29 And your quaint honour turn to dust, skin, and every pore of your body exudes erotic passion, let's 30 And into ashes all my lust; have sex while we can. Let's devour time like lovesick birds of 31 The grave’s a fine and private place, prey instead of lying about letting time eat away at us. Let's put 32 But none, I think, do there embrace. together our strength and our sweetness and use it as a weapon against the iron gates of life. We may not be able to 33 Now therefore, while the youthful hue defeat time in this way, but at least we can make it work hard to 34 Sits on thy skin like morning dew, take us. 35 And while thy willing soul transpires 36 At every pore with instant fires, 37 Now let us sport us while we may, THEMES 38 And now, like amorous birds of prey, 39 Rather at once our time devour LOVE AND DEATH 40 Than languish in his slow-chapped power. “To His Coy Mistress” is a love poem: it celebrates 41 Let us roll all our strength and all beauty, youth, and sexual pleasure. However, the ©2019 LitCharts LLC v.006 www.LitCharts.com Page 1  Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com speaker of the poem is haunted by mortality. Though he away the pleasures of the flesh—his mistress should agree to imagines a luxuriously slow love that takes thousands of years have sex with him soon. What's more, he imagines that their to reach consummation, he knows such a thing is impossible: he erotic "sport" will offer compensation for the pain and suffering will die before it can be accomplished. Death cannot be delayed of life. “Our pleasures,” he argues, will tear through “the iron or defeated; the only response to death, according to the gates of life.” Though he does not imagine that their pleasure speaker, is to enjoy as much pleasure as possible before it will defeat death, he does believe that pleasure is the only comes. He urges the woman he loves not to wait, to enjoy the reasonable response to death. Indeed, he even says that pleasures of life without restraint. The poem draws a contrast enjoying pleasure is a way to defy death. However, the between two kinds of love: the full, rich love that would be grotesque language of stanza 2 may overwhelm the poem’s possible if everyone lived forever, and the rushed, panicked insistence on the power of pleasure. If sexuality is a way to love that mortal beings are forced to enjoy. contest the power of death, it nonetheless seems—even in the The first stanza of the poem poses a question and explores a speaker's own estimation—that death is an overwhelming, hypothetical world: what would love be like if humans had irresistible force. infinite time to love? In response, the speaker imagines a world of unlimited pleasure. For example, he describes his mistress Where this theme appears in the poem: finding precious stones on the banks of the Ganges; he Lines 1-46 describes himself spending two hundred years praising a single part of her body. The key to this paradise, then, is that the normal limitations of human life have been removed. The sheer length of the LINE-BY LINE-BY-LINE -LINE ANAL ANALYSIS YSIS mistress's and the speaker's lives allows them to delay LINES 1-2 consummation of their love indefinitely: the speaker announces that his mistress might “refuse / ‘Till the conversion of the Had we but world enough and time, Jews”—which, in the Christian theology of Marvell’s time, was This coyness, lady, were no crime. expected to occur during the biblical Last Days. In this ideal In the first two lines of "To His Coy Mistress," the poem world, the speaker feels no urgency to consummate their establishes its form and its central concern. The speaker relationship. addresses someone directly, whom he calls "Lady." (This The speaker has no questions about whether his mistress introduces one of the poem's key devices, apostrophe: the rest deserves this long courtship, but he does have qualms about its of the poem will be an apostrophiac address to the Lady). His viability. He is, he notes at the start of stanza 2, always tone is familiar, teasing, and also a bit stern. Though the speaker conscious of the passage of time—and thus of the fact that both seems to know the Lady well, he nonetheless disapproves of he and his mistress will eventually die. Stanza 2 diverges from her choices, and wants to convince her to change, to live the beautiful dream of stanza 1, reflecting instead on the differently. The lady that the speaker address is the same pressing, inescapable threat of death. woman mentioned in the title, "His Coy Mistress." The word "mistress" means something different now than it did in Death, as the speaker imagines it, is the opposite of the Marvell's time. Though contemporary speakers use the word to paradise presented in stanza 1: instead of endless pleasure, it describe a woman who has an affair with a married man, offers “deserts of vast eternity.” The speaker’s view of death is Marvell uses the word in a much more general sense: it simply secular; he is not afraid of going to Hell or being punished for describes a woman who holds authority of some kind, such as a his sins. Instead, he fears death because it cuts short his and his female head of household. mistress’s capacity to enjoy each other. In death, he complains, her beauty will be lost and—unless she consents to have sex The reader may wonder what authority the mistress of before she dies—her virginity will be taken by worms. The Marvell's poem holds. It's a tricky question to answer, because language of this stanza is grotesque. This is a poem of the poem doesn't tell its readers much about her. In fact, at seduction, but it feels profoundly unsexy. The speaker’s horror most, the reader knows that she is "coy:" she is flirtatious, but of death overshadows his erotic passion, but it also makes the she has refused the speaker's advances. The speaker begins the speaker seem more sincere: while at first it might seem that the poem by reproaching her for doing so. He emphasizes, though, speaker is saying all these things primarily because he just that her reticence and delay is not a crime in and of itself: if the wants to have some sex, the despair in the poem implies that two "had...world enough and time" it would be perfectly the speaker's arguments are not mere rhetorical statements acceptable. In other words, if both the speaker and the mistress but rather deeply held beliefs and fears. were immortal, then the mistress could flirt and delay as long as she wanted to. But, the speaker implies, since they are not In the final stanza of the poem, the speaker finally announces immortal—since they can and will die, perhaps soon—it is a his core argument: since death is coming—and since it will strip ©2019 LitCharts LLC v.006 www.LitCharts.com Page 2  Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com "crime" to delay, to flirt, as the mistress has seemingly done in line four: once again, lines 3 and 4 rhyme with each other and the past. follow iambic tetrameter. Though the steady meter and rhyme The first two lines stand as a formal unit. Each line is in flawless continue through lines 5-7, the organization of thought iambic tetrameter, and the lines rhyme with each other in an becomes a little bit looser: instead of introducing and AA scheme. Further, the first line introduces a thought which concluding each thought in two lines, the speaker pauses in the the second line completes. This establishes a pattern for the midst of line 6 and completes his thought one foot short of the poem: the speaker's thoughts often fall into two-line rhyming end of line 7. Despite the pleasures these lines describe, there units, or couplets. When they do not—that is, when a thought is a bit of awkwardness to them, as though they don't quite ends halfway through the second line or continues into a fit—and, in fact, the way that the thought ends before the third—this is a potentially significant variation in the formal completing of line 7 means the pleasures actually physically structure of the poem. The poem binds together the various don't fit—which underlines, perhaps, the extent to which this is concepts it introduces in these opening lines through a fantasy, rather than an achievable reality. alliteration, for example using a repeated /w/ sound, which LINES 7-12 stretches into line 4. The opening lines of the poem also establish the poem's logical structure, which is a syllogism: I would introducing its major premise: if we had all the time in the world Love you ten years before the flood, to love each other, you could be as coy as you want. And you should, if you please, refuse Till the conversion of the Jews. LINES 3-7 My vegetable love should grow We would sit down, and think which way Vaster than empires and more slow; To walk, and pass our long love’s day. In lines 7-12, the speaker continues to imagine what love would Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side be like if he and his mistress could live forever. In the previous Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide lines, he meditated on their activities, imagining them Of Humber would complain. wandering the earth in search of luxurious pleasures. In lines In lines 3-7, the speaker begins an extended thought 7-10, by contrast, he imagines the duration of their love, experiment: what would love be like if human beings did live radically extending their relationship. Under normal conditions, forever—that is, if he and his mistress had "world enough and a relationship between people might last—at most—sixty or time"? In response to this implicit question, the speaker seventy years. By contrast, the speaker employs hyperbole to describes a luxurious, utopian world, spending most of the first imagine that, in a world without death, he and his mistress stanza mapping it out, outlining its pleasures, and presenting would be able to love each other for all of recorded history, his idea of what ideal love should look like. In the first section of beginning "ten years before the flood" and stretching to "the this thought experiment, he focuses on his and his mistress's conversion of the Jews"—which, in the Christian theology activities: what they would do in a world without death. popular during Marvell's lifetime, was supposed to happen during the Last Days, immediately before the Second Coming He describes them wandering over the face of the earth, of Christ and the End of Time. sampling its pleasures and luxuries. His mistress goes all the way to the Ganges River in India—just about as far from Notably, the speaker frames his love in Biblical terms, alluding England as one could get in the 17th century. And he employs to Biblical history—from the flood to the Second Coming—as rich patterns of assonance and consonance through these lines, his reference points for the duration of their love affair. This which intensifies their luxurious, musical feel. Meanwhile, the religious engagement is largely missing from the later parts of speaker remains closer to home, spending his time by the the poem. And in lines 11-12, the speaker swerves away from Humber River in East Yorkshire, near Marvell's real-life home. these Biblical references. Emphasizing again the duration and The two lovers thus spread out across the world—but the intensity of their love in a world without death, he uses distance between them is no issue in this paradise. Notably, metaphor to compare his love to a slow-growing "vegetable" however, the speaker has not given up "complaining," as he and claims that it will eventually be larger than an empire. notes in line 6. The speaker uses the word "complain" in an Rather than make a Biblical reference, here the speaker instead unusual sense, at least to modern readers. He does not mean compares his love to man-made political entities—though the that he will spend eternity whining; rather, he will be writing political too largely disappears from the later parts of the poem. love poems, often called "complaints" in the period. This is an With infinite time to love each other, the speaker has no important note, which the speaker picks up in the lines that problem with the mistress's refusal: she can continue to put follow. Love poetry is important to his idea of paradise; indeed, him off, turn him down, as long as she wants. That is, the only in such a paradise can love poetry be fully realized. extended duration of their relationship allows the speaker to The poem's form continues to be regular through the end of tolerate the mistress's coyness. Though this might serve as an ©2019 LitCharts LLC v.006 www.LitCharts.com Page 3  Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com opportunity to give the readers more information about the the end of time, the "last age" will "show your heart." mistress, the speaker declines to do so: the reader learns only The poem continues its formal regularity through these lines, that she will continue to refuse indefinitely. Instead of learning falling easily into iambic tetrameter and rhymed couplets, the who she is, what she likes, what she's interested in, she first line of which introduces a thought that the next completes. continues to be defined exclusively through her refusal—that is, This formal smoothness gives the poem a feeling of skill and in relation to the man who wants to sleep with her. inevitability. Further, each of the lines is an end-stopped line, so After the slight disruption in the structure of lines 5-7, the the reader is invited to pause and contemplate each of the poem regains its footing in lines 7-12. After the end of line 7, speaker's proposals. Though the speaker is imagining a utopia, a the poem once again falls into two-line units, each featuring world without death, the standard modes of love poetry in his end rhyme and iambic tetrameter—and each two line unit culture continue to operate in that utopia. In other words, the introducing and concluding a new thought. utopia the speaker imagines does not significantly challenge the norms of gender, sexuality, or poetic practice that dominate the LINES 13-18 speaker's culture. An hundred years should go to praise Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze; LINES 19-22 Two hundred to adore each breast, For, lady, you deserve this state, But thirty thousand to the rest; Nor would I love at lower rate. An age at least to every part, But at my back I always hear And the last age should show your heart. Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near; In lines 13-18, the speaker tells the reader, in detail, how he In lines 19-20, the speaker ends his long digression, wrapping would spend eternity if his love for his mistress could extend up his fantasy about what love would be like in a world without forever. The reader has already received some hints along death. He does so by once again addressing his mistress these lines: for example, in line 7, the speaker announces that directly. He assures her that she deserves nothing less than the he will spend his eternal life "complaining"—that is, writing love luxurious love he has described—and he insists that, if it were poems. But in lines 13-18, the speaker gives the reader—and up to him, he would give her such love. The implication, his mistress—a sense of what those love poems will be like. He however, is clear: he cannot give her such love, and so she must will spend, he announces, once again employing hyperbole, a accept a less than ideal form of love. With that, the first stanza hundred years praising her eyes, a hundred gazing on her of the poem comes to a close. The first stanza of the poem is 20 forehead, two hundred "adoring" each of her breasts, and thirty lines long—and it might seem initially that the poem will fall into thousand years in, total, on the rest of her body. units of twenty lines. However, the next two stanzas are The speaker's description here closely resembles an important shorter. The poem is not organized in a predictable stanza tradition in Renaissance poetry, the blazon. In a blazon, a poet structure. Rather, it's set up as an argument: it follows an praises a woman's body by comparing each part of it, "if...but...then" structure. The first stanza presents the "if:" "If separately, to something beautiful: her hair is like a golden net; we lived forever we could wait as long as you want before her teeth are like pearls, etc. Though the blazon purports to having sex." offer dazzling praise, many readers in the Renaissance and The second stanza starts the next phase of the poem's since have been disturbed by the gesture: the way it breaks a syllogism, unfolding its minor premise and, with it, the speaker's woman's body into separate pieces, makes them into objects, objections to the major premise: "But we won't live forever." In and then reassembles them. The result feels potentially fact, the speaker announces in lines 21-22, he is always aware grotesque: imagine if a woman really did have pearls for teeth of time, the way it flies by, carrying him and his mistress toward and golden wire for hair (Shakespeare himself mocked the the grave. He uses a strange and original image to convey his blazon in his Sonnet 130 by refusing to compare his mistress to understanding of time: it is (or has) a "wingèd chariot." This is an beautiful objects)! The speaker of Marvell's poem does not go allusion to two separate traditions for representing time. quite so far as a typical blazon in describing his mistress. He Though it was traditional to represent time as a being with does not tell us what his mistress's eyes look like, for wings—and though it was also traditional to portray it riding in example—merely that he will study them for an extended, a chariot—no one prior to Marvell is known to have combined super-human period. But the results are similar. In place of the two images. Placed together, they intensify each other. Not meaningful information about the mistress—what she looks only does time ride in a chariot, a proverbially speedy vehicle, like, who she is—the speaker gives the reader information but that chariot also has wings—making it even faster and more about his own desires. He wants to gaze, adore, describe; he inevitable. The allusions also personify time: giving it power and requires, presumably, the mistress to remain quiet, pliant, and agency, and making it all the more terrifying. still while he conducts his extended survey of her body. Only at As the speaker moves from stanza 1 to stanza 2, and his ©2019 LitCharts LLC v.006 www.LitCharts.com Page 4  Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com argument shifts from "If" to "But," the form of the poem 26-27; the thought the speaker begins at the start of line 26 remains relatively steady. Lines 19-20 follow the pattern the comes to an abrupt end in the midst of line 27, an example of poem has established, featuring rhymed couplets in iambic caesura. Here the speaker breaks the poem's underlying tetrameter. However, the entrance of "Time" in line 22 seems pattern—where each thought occupies two lines—and the use to disrupt this rhythm. Line 22 maintains the iambic tetrameter, of caesura emphasizes the violence he describes here: he is but only barely; the words "chariot" and "hurrying" both appear imagining the abrupt end of his own poems. to have three syllables, which would interrupt the meter The formal continuity between the first two stanzas suggests completely. Both can actually be pronounced with two syllables two things at once. First, it underlines that—different as the (think "chair-yet" and "hurr-ying") to maintain the line's meter, stanzas are—they are all part of one larger argument, a broader but these words' appearance gives the reader an impression of attempt to seduce the mistress. Second, it suggests that the trying to fit too much into a small space—just as the speaker is speaker's fascination with death is just as powerful as his trying to fit his love into a life that's too short. fantasies about eternal life, and that the goal of his attempted LINES 23-27 seduction is not simply to get his mistress into bed, but rather a more profound defiance in the face of inevitable death. And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity. LINES 27-32 Thy beauty shall no more be found; then worms shall try Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound That long-preserved virginity, My echoing song; And your quaint honour turn to dust, In lines 23-27, the speaker begins to articulate the And into ashes all my lust; consequences of being mortal. He and his mistress will not live The grave’s a fine and private place, forever; they cannot enjoy the slow, luxurious kind of love he But none, I think, do there embrace. describes in stanza 1. Indeed, he suggests in these lines, just the In lines 23-27, the speaker outlines the consequences of opposite awaits them. Instead of wandering the earth and living—and loving—in a world where both he and his mistress sampling its riches, they can expect vast deserts for all of will die. In lines 27-32, he continues that grotesque and eternity: bleak, unchanging, desolate. Instead of slowly upsetting meditation, focusing and intensifying his anxiety surveying his mistress's beauty over the course of more than about death until it reaches a state of intense hyperbole. He thirty thousand years, the speaker will watch her beauty began the stanza by considering the effects of death on beauty disappear, claimed by aging and death. And once she is in the and poetry. He ends it by focusing on its effects on sexuality. He grave, he will no longer be able to praise her beauty in his starts by thinking about the mistress and her sexuality, poems. The world that the speaker and his mistress live in is revealing in the process an important detail about her: she is a thus almost exactly the opposite of the world he imagines in virgin and she has preserved her virginity for a long time. (At stanza 1. (And it is a remarkably secular world: he does not least, it seems like a long time to the speaker—the mistress may imagine a Christian afterlife for either himself or his mistress. feel otherwise). But, he argues, there's no point in remaining a She will not live on in heaven—or in hell. Instead, she and her virgin forever. If she does, he notes, in a singularly grotesque body will lie in the grave, unredeemed). rhetorical flourish, then worms will take her virginity when Point by point, the speaker tests his fantasy against a bitter she's in the grave. Her virginity and the honor that comes with reality. The implication of this reality, as the speaker describes it, he argues, are only worthwhile while she's alive—and they're it, is relatively clear: given the future that awaits them, the only worthwhile if she cashes them in, exchanging them for mistress's coyness is a crime. She should stop refusing and give some particularly rich pleasure. in to his advances. But the speaker does not make this The speaker applies the same standard to himself: just as the implication explicit until stanza 3. Instead, he devotes the rest mistress's honor will turn to dust, so too will his erotic desire of stanza 2 to elaborating on the point he makes here, dwelling turn into ashes. Death, for both of them, marks the end of with horrified fascination on the fact of death and its effects on sexual pleasure. Here the speaker pointedly breaks from one of the body. the cherished clichés of his culture: a culture in which "to die" What is perhaps most striking about these lines, then, is how was often a euphemism for orgasm. For Marvell's speaker, beautiful they are: even as the speaker describes horrifying, death is not the image of sexual pleasure, but rather its eternal desolation, he uses elegant and mellifluous language to opposite. In case the reader—or the mistress—has missed his do so, employing assonance and consonance. One might expect point, he makes it explicit in the final two lines of the stanza. the form of the poem to change as it engages with death, but Though a grave might seem like the perfect place—quiet and lines 23-27 are fairly regular: rhyming couplets of iambic private—no one has sex there. tetrameter. However, there is a slight disturbance in lines The speaker's tone throughout these lines is grotesque. ©2019 LitCharts LLC v.006 www.LitCharts.com Page 5  Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com Though he seems, at points, to be joking, his jokes are iambic tetrameter. Further, lines 33-36 form natural two-line unsettling—particularly in a poem of seduction. In these lines, it pairs, the first line of each pair introducing a new thought and seems as though the speaker may actually be interested in the second line completing it. Line 37, however, stands on its shocking—and mocking—his mistress rather than seducing her; own—fittingly, since it is, in a sense, the poem's thesis indeed, even as he threatens that worms will take her virginity, statement. The speaker breaks the rhetorical organization of he also makes light of her commitment to preserving it. As his the poem up to this moment to emphasize this line and its rhetoric becomes increasingly mocking and grotesque, message. however, he maintains the smooth flow of his verse. These lines fall easily into iambic tetrameter couplets, the speaker's ideas LINES 38-40 divided naturally into the couplets, and they contain elegant And now, like amorous birds of prey, plays of sound—particularly assonance, in their repeated /a/ Rather at once our time devour sound. Though his lines might disturb the reader and the Than languish in his slow-chapped power. mistress, the speaker seems to remain unfazed by the In line 37, the speaker presents the thesis statement of the grotesque argument he makes here. poem: "Now let us sport us while we may." Over the next 9 lines, the speaker explains why he and his mistress should indulge in LINES 33-37 sensual pleasures immediately, offering a series of reasons. In Now therefore, while the youthful hue lines 38-40, he lays out his first reason. Using a simile to Sits on thy skin like morning dew, comparing himself and his mistress to "birds of prey"—i.e. a And while thy willing soul transpires hawk or an eagle—he argues they should be as vicious and At every pore with instant fires, voracious as such birds, "devouring" their time on earth, rather Now let us sport us while we may, than daintily picking at it. Though they remain implicit, the In the first stanza, the speaker poses a hypothetical: what speaker seems to expand his anxieties about mortality here. would love be like if he and his mistress lived forever? In the Not only do he and his mistress have a limited time on earth, second stanza, he explains why that kind of love is impossible, but they may actually shorten it by indulging in pleasure emphasizing their shared mortality in grotesque terms. In the together. The speaker draws here on widespread beliefs in final stanza of the poem, he reaches the final part of his Renaissance medicine, which held that some kinds of sexual syllogism and presents his conclusion: the outcome of the activity could weaken or diminish the body, particularly the argument he's been slowly building over the previous two bodies of men. stanzas. His mistress, he argues in lines 33-37, cannot afford to Nevertheless, the speaker thinks it's worth the risk: the wait one moment longer. She should have sex with him alternative is horrifying. If they don't devour their time on immediately: "Now let us sport us while we may," the speaker earth, time itself will slowly consume them: they will languish in insists. its jaws as it slowly breaks their bodies apart. Better to get it In making this argument, the speaker focuses once again on the over with quickly—and better to be the ones devouring, rather mistress's body, describing how it looks to him with a slightly than the ones who are devoured. The speaker thus advances an ominous simile: it is so young and beautiful it looks like morning almost cynical, nihilistic position here: he recognizes that death dew. (Like morning dew, it will evaporate shortly). And, in a is coming for him no matter what, so it's better to enjoy himself complex pair of lines (35-36), he suggests that it exudes sexual as much as possible before it comes. He does not hold out hope desire. Her "willing soul transpires"—that is, it escapes like for relief from death—through, for example, Christian salvation. steam rising from a vent—through her pores. This is a revealing Indeed, as elsewhere in the poem, there seems no possibility of suggestion. The speaker assumes (perhaps with reason) that an afterlife. his mistress is not entirely sincere in her refusals; she is full of Following line 37, which stands on its own conceptually, the sexual desire. Hence, perhaps, his use of the word "coy" in the three lines from 38-40 of the poem form a single unit title and the first stanza of the poem: the word implies a certain conceptual unit, breaking from the two-line pattern the speaker amount of calculation and perhaps deceit. The speaker upholds elsewhere in the poem. Nevertheless, the lines are evidently regards her refusal as part of a game; he thinks she's otherwise smooth and formally regular. Whatever anxiety lies playing hard to get. The reader has no opportunity to evaluate underneath it, the speaker maintains his composure as he whether the speaker is correct in his evaluation: since the makes this desperate and disturbing comparison. mistress never speaks, and since the speaker hardly describes her, the reader has only the speaker's word to go on. LINES 41-46 This is a key moment in the poem: where the speaker finally Let us roll all our strength and all makes his case. On a formal level, the speaker manages the Our sweetness up into one ball, moment with skill, maintaining rhymed couplets in steady And tear our pleasures with rough strife ©2019 LitCharts LLC v.006 www.LitCharts.com Page 6  Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com Through the iron gates of life: Thus, though we cannot make our sun SYMBOLS Stand still, yet we will make him run. In the poem's final six lines, the speaker lays out the last HEART element of his argument, expanding on the simile of the birds of The speaker spends much of stanza 1 imagining that prey in line 38 to offer another reason why the mistress should he will spend eternity slowly, luxuriously describing stop refusing and take the speaker as her lover. He begins in and praising each part of his mistress's body. His focus is on lines 41-44 with a complex and puzzling image: he wants to physical features and physical beauty: her forehead, eyes, and "roll all our strength and all / Our sweetness up into one ball." breasts. In line 18, however, the speaker turns to the mistress's The image is obscure and scholars have dedicated considerable "heart." One hopes this is not literal: that he does not plan to cut energy to unpacking it, without arriving at consensus. Perhaps into her chest and describe the organ itself. Rather, the heart most convincingly, it might be taken as an allusion to a speech functions symbolically here, representing the mistress's by Aristophanes in Plato's Symposium. In that text, innermost character. The use of the symbol—and the timing of Aristophanes argues that human beings were originally shaped its introduction—suggest some important things about the like balls, with two heads, four arms, and four legs. However, utopian world the speaker imagines in this stanza. In this world, these ball-people were too strong for their own good and made the mistress can delay revealing her true self until the very end war on the gods. Zeus, the King of the Gods, responded by of time. Though the speaker continues to love her, passionately, splitting them in half, so that human beings spend all their lives she does not have to reciprocate until she's good and ready. It looking for their other half, the part of them that was cut off by also suggests something about what's at stake for the speaker: the gods. Marvell seems to imagine he and his mistress making he wants to have his mistress's heart, hinting at a genuine themselves into such a ball. It is at once a touching image and romantic love rather than simple lust. This is a rather chaste an obscene one: touching, because he suggests that she is his desire: the rest of the poem is much more explicit. The speaker missing half; obscene, because of course they would create withholds the full force of his desire here, early in the poem, such a united body by having sex. restraining his more sexual ambitions until much later. The speaker then imagines that he and his mistress will challenge the powers that govern their lives, tearing "with Where this symbol appears in the poem: rough strife / through the iron gates of life." The image is once Line 18: “heart.” again obscure, with scholars debating what, exactly, "the iron gates of life" represent. Some have said that the image likely represents the mistress's virginity and the speaker's plan to DESERTS OF VAST ETERNITY deflower her. While this may be true, there are also other In line 24, the speaker compares death to "deserts of suggestions in the line: there seems something suicidal about vast eternity." The deserts he has in mind are not the act, as though the speaker and his mistress willingly seek literal spaces. Instead, they represent time itself, symbolically. out death. The intention seems to be to shock and surprise the In using this symbol, the speaker draws on a key tradition in forces that govern their lives—forces like time and perhaps western thought. Deserts are important spaces in western death itself. Indeed, in the poem's final couplet, the speaker religion and art. In Christianity, for example, the desert is often outlines his grandest ambition: though he and his mistress a space of trial and tribulation. Jesus, for example, is tempted cannot make time (presented, metonymically, by the sun, by Satan in the desert. (This temptation forms the subject of a whose motion marks the passage of time) stand still, they can poem by Marvell's close friend, John Milton—Paradise shock it, force it to work harder to catch and capture them. Once again, the speaker's position veers into cynicism. He does Regained). And the early saints of Christianity often retreated not imagine being released from time or mortality. Instead, he to the desert to attain spiritual clarity and to live free of sin. imagines pleasure as a desperate and temporary refuge from Marvell's speaker, however, consciously rejects this tradition: death. As the speaker's thinking turns desperate, however, his instead of being a space of religious meaning, it is a blank and verse remains smooth as it has throughout the poem: rhyming empty space, devoid of pleasure, devoid of content. It does not couplets in iambic tetrameter, each couplet with its own contain either the punishment or the paradise that Christians thought. Part of the poem's charm, then, lies in the way its expect after death. It belongs, in other words, to a surprisingly sauve, urbane surface contrasts with its dark secular worldview: one in which death is an absolute end with undertones—undertones the speaker is barely able to control. nothing beyond it. This view of the world suits Marvell's speaker, since he wants to convince his mistress to have sex with him immediately, without saving her honor for the afterlife. The desert thus symbolizes the speaker's nihilistic, ©2019 LitCharts LLC v.006 www.LitCharts.com Page 7  Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com even atheistic beliefs about the afterlife, and it also marks the symbol for youth itself: the way it is beautiful and delicate; the extent to which he has turned his back on the traditional way it evaporates quickly as life progresses. Here, the speaker images of Christianity. uses the symbol in this traditional—indeed, almost clichéd—sense. Where this symbol appears in the poem: Where this symbol appears in the poem: Line 24: “Deserts of vast eternity” Line 34: “morning dew” DUST AND ASHES At the end of stanza 2, the speaker notes that, in the POETIC DEVICES grave, his mistress's virginity (and the honor it represents) will "turn to dust." Death reduces something vital PERSONIFICATION and living to an inert substance. Dust is an important symbol of In "To His Coy Mistress" the speaker uses personification to death and decay in the history of western thought: for example, describe time as though it has the human qualities of power, casting Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden, God agency, and intelligence. For instance, in line 40 the speaker announces to them, "For dust thou art and to dust thou shall describes time as having "slow-chapped power"—suggesting return." To be mortal, in this Biblical framework, is to be made that it has the capacity to break things apart. Similarly, in line of dust. Life itself is only a temporary escape from being dust. 22, time is described as having a "wingèd chariot." In the poem, The speaker extends and even subverts this traditional symbol. time owns things, moves around, drives horses. In his account, it is not the mistress's body but her honor which is dust. Honor is an abstract concept, a social convention, Even as the speaker describes time as an inexorable force, he rather than something physical. But the speaker's use of the also describes time as a character, with intelligence and power. symbol suggests that it does have material value. He makes this In this sense, the poem comes to seem like a drama, a fight claim strategically, to support his argument. Honor, he between two kinds of intelligence, human and non-human. In suggests, is just as fragile as the body. Like the body, it will be this battle, the speaker seems almost ready to concede defeat: devoured by death. There is no sense in trying to preserve it, as a character, time seems in this poem omnipotent, incapable since it will turn to nothing as soon as death comes. of being defeated. One might read this as part of the speaker's strategy: he wants to seduce his mistress by showing her she In this sense, the symbol is similar to, but also different from, has no better option. But the personification of time also makes the "ashes" that appear in the next line. It is traditional to invoke its power seem overwhelming, so much so that one might ashes when discussing lust: lust is like a fire, and like a fire it imagine the speaker is making his case so strongly that the burns out. Like the dust in the previous line, death reduces a mistress's reaction might be one of panic and existential dread, vital, living force to an inert substance. However, Marvell is rather than erotic pleasure. content to employ the symbol of ashes in a relatively traditional way, in contrast to his subversive discussion of dust in the previous line. Where P Personification ersonification appears in the poem: Line 22: “Time’s wingèd chariot ” Where this symbol appears in the poem: Line 40: “in his slow-chapped power” Line 46: “we will make him run” Line 29: “dust” Line 30: “ashes” METAPHOR "To His Coy Mistress" contains a number of metaphors. The MORNING DEW speaker employs the device to add nuance to his account of In line 34, the speaker compares the mistress's love, time, and sexual pleasure, rendering these abstract youthful skin to "morning dew." Dew is often used as categories visceral and immediate. For example, in line 23, the a symbol for youth—and for fragility. Dew is a liquid that speaker describes what awaits him and his mistress: "And appears on plants and grasses in the morning, as the yonder all before us lie / Deserts of vast eternity." It's a bleak temperature changes. It generally evaporates as the sun rises, and affecting image; the speaker suggests that there is no life disappearing by mid-morning. These properties make it an after death, and therefore no reason to wait to enjoy earthly attractive symbol for poets to use. Human life is often pleasures. Comparing eternity to a "vast desert," he also compared to a day, with the morning symbolizing youth and the suggests that eternity is desolate, dull, and painful—in sharp evening symbolizing old age. The dew seems almost an ideal contrast to the luxurious world without death he imagines in ©2019 LitCharts LLC v.006 www.LitCharts.com Page 8  Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com stanza 1. The use of metaphors like these creates some of the she looks like to him: "the youthful hue," he notes in lines 33-4, poem's uncanny power. Though the speaker seems to set out "sits on thy skin like morning dew." This simile performs a with a simple goal in mind—to convince his mistress to sleep number of tasks at once. First, it tells the reader that the with him—his language takes on a life of its own, describing mistress is—or looks—young: her skin is fresh, un-aged. Second, death and time with an unsettling (and unsexy) power. it tells the reader that her youth is evanescent. It may glimmer Similarly, in the poem's final lines the speaker employs a and shine like the morning dew, but it will evaporate as soon as complex and somewhat obscure metaphor that is also an the sun falls on it. (In this way, it subtly sets up the final two allusion to classical philosophy. First, he instructs his mistress lines of the poem, where the speaker calls on the mistress to to "roll all our strength and all / Our sweetness up into one ball." challenge "our sun"). Third, it reminds the reader that they This odd image may be an allusion to Aristophanes's speech in encounter the mistress only through the speaker's account of Plato's Symposium. Aristophanes argues that humans were her. Because this is a simile, the reader does not get a literal originally shaped like balls, with four arms and four legs, before description of the mistress. Instead, the reader is given a sense the gods split them in two; now, human beings spend their lives of how the speaker sees her. trying to unite with their other halves. It's a sweet and Later in the stanza, the speaker expresses his ambitions for his suggestive allusion: it implies that the mistress is the speaker's union with the mistress: they will "sport" "like amorous birds of soulmate; it also suggests that they reunite through sex. prey." Like many of the poem's metaphors, the simile may say After this allusion, though, the speaker has further instructions: more than the speaker intends to. On the one hand, it imagines they should "tear our pleasures with rough strife / Through the the speaker and his mistress enjoying sensual pleasure iron gates of life." It is not entirely clear what the "iron gates of voraciously, like a hawk or eagle consuming its prey. On the life" represent. Some critics suggest that they represent other hand, it suggests that there is something violent and virginity; others say that they represent the force of death and predatory about their pleasure. Line 39 heightens this decay, which prevents the speaker and his mistress from loving predatory suggestion. The birds of prey do not devour some each other forever. In either case, it is a painful and disturbing innocent mouse or vole, but rather "our time": that is, they image: the speaker and his mistress may be united as devour themselves. The speaker thus suggests there is soulmates, but once they come together their activities are something self-destructive about their pleasure—a terrifying, violent and rough. As a metaphor, "iron gates of life" underlines rather than sexy, image. the rough, painful, and potentially violent nature of their union—and once again bends the poem away from its Where Simile appears in the poem: ostensibly seductive intent. Lines 33-34: “the youthful hue / Sits on thy skin like morning dew” Where Metaphor appears in the poem: Line 38: “like amorous birds of prey” Line 11: “My vegetable love ” Line 18: “the last age should show your heart” ALLITERATION Line 22: “Time’s wingèd chariot” "To His Coy Mistress" is a highly alliterative poem. The speaker Line 24: “Deserts of vast eternity” uses alliteration to emphasize and underline his argument, Lines 35-36: “thy willing soul transpires / At every pore building connections between apparently unrelated concepts with instant fires” and categories—connections which allow him to build his case. Line 40: “his slow-chapped power” The reader can see this strategy on display in the opening lines Lines 41-46: “Let us roll all our strength and all / Our of the poem, where the speaker alliterates on three sounds: w, l, sweetness up into one ball, / And tear our pleasures with and c: rough strife / Through the iron gates of life: / Thus, though we cannot make our sun / Stand still, yet we will Had we but world enough and time, make him run.” This coyness, lady, were no crime. We would sit down, and think which way SIMILE To walk, and pass our long love’s day. In addition to the metaphors peppered throughout the poem, "To His Coy Mistress" contains two similes in its third stanza. The pattern of alliteration binds the passage together. For After describing the power of time and the terror of death in example, the activities the speaker lists in lines 3-4 (walking and the second stanza, the speaker returns, at the start of stanza 3, sitting) are linked to the opening "we" and "world" by to describing the mistress's body. Unlike the first stanza, alliteration, emphasizing their conceptual connection. (These though, this description is not hypothetical: he tells us what she are, after all, the things the speaker and his mistress would do if actually looks like. Or, more precisely, he tells the reader what they had "world enough and time"). Likewise, the alliteration of ©2019 LitCharts LLC v.006 www.LitCharts.com Page 9  Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com "coyness" and "crime" suggests that coyness is a crime, before through the center of the line: "...My echooing so ong; then wo orms the speaker explicitly makes this case. In this sense, alliteration shall try..." The repetition underlines the connection between helps the speaker underline his argument and suggest its future the loss of the speaker's song and the invasion of the worms, direction. suggesting that—for the speaker at least—they are equally severe losses. Where Alliter Alliteration ation appears in the poem: Where Assonance appears in the poem: Line 1: “w,” “w” Line 2: “c,” “l,” “w,” “c” Line 3: “a,” “y” Line 3: “W,” “w,” “w,” “w” Line 4: “a,” “a,” “a,” “y” Line 4: “w,” “l,” “l” Line 5: “a,” “a,” “i” Line 7: “w,” “w” Line 6: “i,” “I ,” “i” Line 8: “y,” “y” Line 7: “ou,” “I” Line 9: “y” Line 9: “ou” Line 11: “v” Line 10: “o,” “o,” “o” Line 12: “V” Line 11: “o,” “o” Line 14: “Th,” “th” Line 12: “o” Line 16: “th,” “th” Line 13: “o,” “o” Line 21: “B,” “b” Line 17: “A,” “a,” “ea,” “y” Line 25: “sh” Line 18: “A,” “a,” “a” Line 26: “sh” Line 19: “a” Line 27: “sh” Line 20: “a” Line 29: “A” Line 23: “ie” Line 30: “A” Line 24: “y” Line 34: “S,” “s” Line 27: “o,” “o,” “o,” “y” Line 35: “s” Line 28: “o,” “y” Line 37: “s” Line 29: “A,” “ou,” “ou” Line 39: “o,” “o” Line 30: “A,” “a” Line 40: “l” Line 31: “a,” “a,” “a,” “a” Line 41: “L,” “a,” “a” Line 32: “a” Line 44: “l” Line 33: “ou,” “ue” Line 45: “m” Line 34: “y,” “i,” “ew” Line 46: “m” Line 35: “i,” “y,” “i,” “i” Line 36: “i,” “i” ASSONANCE Line 37: “o,” “u,” “u,” “ay” Line 38: “o,” “ey” "To His Coy Mistress" generates much of its charm—and its Line 39: “ou,” “ou” persuasiveness—from the sheer pleasure of its language, which Line 40: “a,” “a,” “a” is bright and musical throughout. Alongside its use of Line 41: “a,” “a” alliteration and consonance, the speaker uses assonance to Line 42: “a” generate this linguistic music. For example, in lines 4-5, the Line 43: “ea,” “ea,” “i” speaker employs a repeated /a/ sound: Line 44: “i,” “i” Line 45: “u,” “ou,” “u” To waalk, and paass our long love’s daay. Line 46: “u” Thou by the Indiaan Gaanges’ side CONSONANCE Note that the pattern of assonance extends across the end of one sentence and into the start of the next. The assonance thus Alongside its use of assonance and alliteration, "To His Coy guides the reader, suggesting that one should treat the second Mistress" makes frequent use of consonance, another tool in its sentence as a continuation of the first. The music of the poem musical repertoire, which contributes to the poem's melodic thus also performs a structural function, helping the reader to feel; that is, the way that the poem manages to charm even as it move through its complex and extended argument. tries to convince. From a critical standpoint, the poem's use of such plays of sound is most interesting when the speaker uses Further, the use of assonance often underlines the poem's them to underline or expand his argument. For example, as the argument. For example, in line 27, the speaker uses an o sound speaker describes death for his mistress, he falls into a ©2019 LitCharts LLC v.006 www.LitCharts.com Page 10  Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com repeated /n/ sound: Line 38: “n,” “m,” “r,” “r,” “r”...then n worms shall try Line 39: “R,” “r,” “m,” “r” That lonng-preserved virgin nity, Line 40: “n,” “n,” “n,” “pp,” “p” And your quainnt honnour turn n to dust, Line 41: “ll,” “ll,” “ll” Line 42: “n,” “n,” “n,” “ll” The smooth /n/ sound binds together the various things he lists Line 43: “r,” “r,” “r,” “r,” “f” here, helping the reader understand the connection between Line 44: “r,” “r,” “f” "virginity" and "quaint honour." It also emphasizes the sense of Line 45: “nn,” “r,” “n” fear and anxiety that the speaker wants to instill in his mistress: Line 46: “n,” “m,” “m,” “n” the repeated /n/ sound gives these lines a pulsing, anxious sonic quality that runs alongside and underneath his argument. Here ENJAMBMENT the sound of the poem acts to reinforce and intensify the "To His Coy Mistress" is conceptually organized into two-line speaker's argument, giving it more force. units : in the first line, the speaker introduces a new thought or idea, which he completes in the second line. (It is also organized Where Consonance appears in the poem: into two-line units sonically, since it is in rhyming couplets). This organization might mean that every other line in the poem Line 1: “d,” “t,” “d,” “n,” “t,” “m” should be enjambed, as in the opening four lines of stanza two: Line 2: “n,” “d,” “m” Line 3: “d,” “d,” “n,” “k” But at my back I always hear Line 4: “k” Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near; Line 5: “n,” “d,” “n,” “n,” “d” Line 6: “t,” “t,” “d” And yonder all before us lie Line 7: “n,” “d” Deserts of vast eternity. Line 8: “d” Line 9: “d,” “s,” “s” Line 21 and 23 end with verbs, "hear" and "lie," and the reader Line 10: “n,” “s,” “n,” “s” learns in the next lines the objects of those verbs are. That is, Line 11: “l,” “l” lines 22 and 24 complete the thoughts that begin in lines 21 Line 12: “r,” “r,” “r” and 23; as a mark of this completion, each of the concluding Line 13: “h,” “d,” “r,” “d,” “r,” “s,” “r,” “s” lines is end-stopped. Line 14: “s,” “h,” “z” This might be taken as a kind of ideal organization toward Line 15: “h,” “d,” “d,” “d,” “st” which the poem aspires: a state of coordination, confidence and Line 16: “t,” “d,” “st” control. However, the poem rarely achieves that goal, for a Line 17: “st,” “r,” “t” range of reasons. Sometimes, the speaker's thoughts don't fall Line 18: “st,” “rt” into two line units, as lines 5-6, where the speaker's thought Line 19: “d,” “d,” “st,” “t” ends in the middle of line 6. In that case, the speaker ends up Line 20: “t” with two enjambments in a row, as he begins his next thought. Line 21: “m,” “w,” “r” In other places, his thoughts only take up a line each, as in lines Line 22: “m,” “w,” “r” 14-20. In this case, there are six end-stops in a row. This is a Line 23: “ll,” “l” disruption, but it is significantly less disruptive than what Line 25: “t,” “ll,” “nd” happens in line 6. Even though each of the lines in 14-20 is end- Line 26: “t,” “nd” stopped, the reader can still pair them together as two-line Line 27: “n,” “t” units that form complete thoughts. For example, in lines 14-15, Line 28: “n,” “n” the speaker lists his mistress's body parts with considerable Line 29: “n,” “n,” “n,” “st” detail and specificity. In the next pair of lines, 16-17, he Line 30: “n,” “st” becomes more general about which parts he will address and Line 31: “v,” “n,” “v,” “c” how long it will take. Though the enjambments have Line 32: “n,” “n,” “n,” “c” disappeared, the basic organization of the poem remains intact. Line 33: “N,” “th,” “l,” “th,” “th,” “l” Not so in line 6, where the start of one thought and the Line 34: “S,” “th,” “s,” “n,” “n” beginning of another jostle for space. In studying the poem's Line 35: “l,” “th,” “ll,” “l,” “s,” “s” use of enjambment, the reader should focus on moments like Line 36: “n,” “t,” “n,” “t,” “s” this one, where the speaker seems to lose control. These points Line 37: “N,” “t,” “s,” “s,” “t,” “s” seem to betray a lack of confidence on the speaker's part, or ©2019 LitCharts LLC v.006 www.LitCharts.com Page 11  Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com perhaps even a crisis of his imagination. introducing and completing a single thought. There is a full and seamless accord between form and content here, with the Where Enjambment appears in the poem: poem's ideas fitting perfectly into its rhyming couplets. Line 3: “way ” However, the speaker is not always so successful at achieving Line 4: “To walk” this accord—and there are frequent places in the poem where Line 5: “side” enjambment and end-stops get out of sync with the poem's Line 6: “Shouldst,” “ tide” rhyming units. For example, lines 28-30 are all end-stopped. Line 7: “Of,” “would ” Here the speaker simply lists the consequences of death, Line 8: “Love” without binding them together into carefully balanced two-line Line 9: “ refuse ” units. The speaker seems carried away, overwhelmed by the Line 10: “Till ” power of death--even deprived of his capacity to control the Line 11: “grow” poem. The result is a series of short, discrete thoughts that pile Line 12: “Vaster” on top of each other willy-nilly. The key to interpreting the Line 13: “praise ” poem's use of end-stop and enjambment is thus to measure it Line 14: “Thine” against the poem's two-line pattern—and to observe carefully Line 21: “hear ” where and why it breaks that pattern. Line 22: “Time’s” Line 23: “lie ” Where End-Stopped Line appears in the poem: Line 24: “Deserts” Line 26: “sound ” Line 2: “crime” Line 27: “My,” “try ” Line 3: “W” Line 28: “That” Line 4: “day. ” Line 33: “hue ” Line 5: “Thou” Line 34: “Sits” Line 8: “flood, ” Line 35: “transpires ” Line 9: “And” Line 36: “At” Line 10: “Jews. ” Line 39: “devour ” Line 11: “My” Line 40: “Than” Line 12: “slow; ” Line 41: “all” Line 13: “An” Line 42: “Our” Line 14: “gaze; ” Line 43: “strife ” Line 15: “Two,” “breast,” Line 44: “Through” Line 16: “But,” “rest; ” Line 45: “sun ” Line 17: “An,” “part,” Line 46: “Stand” Line 18: “And,” “heart.” Line 19: “For,” “state,” Line 20: “Nor,” “rate. ” END-STOPPED LINE Line 22: “near;” "To His Coy Mistress" is organized into two-line units. When Line 23: “And” the poem is working smoothly and the speaker is at the height Line 24: “eternity.” of his confidence and poetic power, each of his ideas divides Line 25: “Thy,” “found; ” into two lines, beginning at the start of the first line and ending Line 26: “Nor” at the end of the second. Often, this means that the second line Line 28: “virginity, ” of each two-line pair is end-stopped, since it marks the end of a Line 29: “And,” “dust,” thought. The reader can observe this pattern in the poem's first Line 30: “And ,” “lust; ” four lines: Line 32: “embrace. ” Line 33: “Now” Had we but world enough and time, Line 34: “dew, ” This coyness, lady, were no crime. Line 35: “And” We would sit down, and think which way Line 36: “fires,” To walk, and pass our long love’s day. Line 37: “Now,” “may, ” Line 40: “power.” The first and third lines are enjambed; the second and fourth Line 41: “Let” are end-stopped. Each couplet forms its own unit conceptually, Line 42: “ball,” ©2019 LitCharts LLC v.006 www.LitCharts.com Page 12  Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com APOSTROPHE Line 43: “And” "To His Coy Mistress" reads like a long dramatic monologue or Line 44: “life:” letter: the speaker of the poem is speaking to his mistress, Line 45: “Thus” trying to cajole and convince, intimidate and persuade. One Line 46: “run.” sees this apostrophe early in the poem, when the speaker addresses the mistress directly, calling her "lady" in line 2. CAESURA However, the mistress is silent throughout the poem: the "To His Coy Mistress" contains a number of caesuras. Some of speaker (and the poet) do not give her space to respond, to these caesuras are incidental and unimportant to interpreting defend herself, to explain her perspective. The use of the poem. For example, there's a caesura early in line 14: "An apostrophe through directly addressing the mistress thus hundred years should go to praise / Thine eyes,, and on thy contributes to two key aspects of the poem. First, it accounts forehead gaze..." The pause is definite and marked. However, it for the poem's argumentative character. This is not simply a serves mainly as an occasion for the speaker to gather his poem that describes love and death; it is a poem that tries to thoughts and add another item to the list of things he'd do in a persuade the mistress to take a specific action—and it speaks perfect world. It does not fundamentally disrupt the directly to her in service of that goal. Second, it accounts for the organization of the poem or change the reader's sense of the mistress's silence in the poem. This is a poem in which the speaker's priorities. speaker possesses a monopoly over speech; the mistress's role More important are the cases where strong caesuras divide up in the poem is simply to receive his message. A different kind of different thoughts in the space of a single line. Since the poem poem might allow dialogue and debate, but such a poem would is divided into two line units, with each unit introducing and not be apostrophiac. then concluding its own, discrete thought, any such caesura marks a sharp break from the poem's general pattern. One can Where Apostrophe appears in the poem: find a good example of the force of such a caesura in lines Lines 1-46 25-28: ALLUSION Thy beauty shall no more be found; Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound "To His Coy Mistress" contains a number of allusions, drawn My echoing song;; then worms shall try from geography, Biblical history, classical mythology, and That long-preserved virginity... philosophy. At times it employs these allusions in relatively predictable ways. For example, the speaker's allusion to the The trouble begins at the end of line 25. The speaker's thought Ganges river in line 5 is designed to emphasize the extent of ends abruptly there instead of continuing onto the next line. the mistress's hypothetical wanderings: she can travel to the Then line 26 introduces a new thought, which spills over onto far side of the world, to a distant and (to a seventeenth-century line 27 and ends mid-line. The next thought also takes up a line English person) exotic place. The history and cultural and a half. The mid-line caesura in line 27 is thus a symptom of a significance of the river are not particularly important to the broader disorganization in the speaker's thoughts: he has poem. Though one might accuse the poet of cultural already lost the smooth, controlled flow that characterizes his insensitivity, this allusion matches the way most English poets thinking elsewhere in the poem, and the result is an awkward of Marvell's period thought about eastern cultures and mid-line pause. Reading these lines, one feels the extent to geographies. In this case, allusion reinforces the speaker's which the speaker is not simply describing death for rhetorical argument, strengthening his vision of utopian love in a world effect, but is himself overcome by anxiety and fear of death-- without death. anxiety that he cannot entirely manage. The caesura thus Allusion works in similar ways throughout the poem, serves as an index, not only of the speaker's disordered underlining and emphasizing the development of the speaker's thinking, but also of his disordered feelings. argument. But in some places, he deviates from the traditions that underlie his allusions. For instance, in lines 21-22, he notes Where Caesur Caesuraa appears in the poem: that he "always hear[s] / Time's wingèd chariot..." Here he combines two separate traditional images of Time. In the Line 3: “,” Renaissance, time was often portrayed with wings or riding in a Line 6: “;” chariot. Both images emphasize the speed of time and the way Line 7: “.” it flies by. However, until Marvel's poem, they were separate Line 27: “;” images. Combining them is a bit like squaring a number: the two Line 46: “,” images amplify and intensify each other. In the speaker's mind, ©2019 LitCharts LLC v.006 www.LitCharts.com Page 13  Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com time is not just fast--it's super fast. Marvell thus breaks with the SYLLOGISM traditions that underlie his allusion, but he does so to add to the "To His Coy Mistress" is a poem designed to persuade. In force and power of his argument. making his argument that his mistress should sleep with him, the speaker falls back on one of the key techniques of classical Where Allusion appears in the poem: rhetoric: the syllogism. Following the structure first advanced Line 5: “Ganges’” in Aristotle's Rhetoric, "To His Coy Mistress" might be divided Line 7: “Humber” into three separate sections: a major premise, a minor premise, Line 10: “the conversion of the Jews” and a conclusion. Each of these sections occupies a single Line 22: “Time’s wingèd chariot” stanza. In the first stanza, the speaker advances his major premise. Indeed, it appears in the poem's first two lines: "Had HYPERBOLE we but world enough and time, / This coyness, lady, were no crime." The speaker begins by advancing a hypothetical: if he "To His Coy Mistress" is a poem of persuasion and seduction: and his mistress could live forever, it would not be a crime to be the speaker tries to convince his mistress to have sex with him, coy. He spends the rest of the stanza elaborating that using every rhetorical means at his disposal—including hypothetical scenario, exploring what love would be like in a hyperbole. Indeed, at times the speaker goes far beyond the world without death. boundaries of common decency, describing death and the decay of corpses in grotesque detail. In lines 27-28, for In the second stanza, the speaker advances his minor premise. instance, he notes that, if the mistress fails to sleep with him, Once again, he does so in the opening lines: then she will die a virgin and "then worms shall try / That long- preserved virginity." This is probably not literally true. Instead it But at my back I always hear is a disturbing exaggeration, designed to shock the mistress so Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near profoundly that she gives in to the speaker's demands. One And yonder all before us lie might wonder how effective this tactic actually is; such lines Deserts of vast eternity. seem more likely to shock than seduce. The poem's indulgence in hyperbole seems at times to threaten its project, which There is no time to waste, the speaker argues: time is always reveals something about the speaker. His fear of death is not rushing by and it leads, inevitably, to death. The speaker spends simply a rhetorical tool to get his mistress to sleep with him. the rest of the stanza articulating the force and power of death, Instead, it is powerful enough to overwhelm his ostensible describing what it will do to the mistress's body in grotesque goal—persuading the mistress to sleep with him—and terms. effectively take over the poem, turning it from a poem about The speaker does not expand the implicit consequence of his the pleasures and joys of sexuality into a morbid meditation on argument until the start of the third stanza, where his syllogism the fragility of human life. reaches its conclusion: Where Hyperbole appears in the poem: Now therefore, while the youthful hue Sits on thy skin like morning dew, Lines 13-18: “An hundred years should go to praise / And while thy willing soul transpires Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze; / Two hundred to At every pore with instant fires, adore each breast, / But thirty thousand to the rest; / An Now let us sport us while we may, age at least to every part, / And the last age should show your heart. ” Because time is always flying by, the speaker argues, he and his Lines 27-28: “then worms shall try / That long- preserved virginity, ” mistress must have sex—"now," he says repeatedly. The rest of Lines 29-32: “And your quaint honour turn to dust, / the stanza describes what this will look and feel like. The And into ashes all my lust; / The grave’s a fine and private poem's three stanzas thus correspond to the three parts of a place, / But none, I think, do there embrace” syllogism, a logical argument which moves through its premises Lines 33-36: “while the youthful hue / Sits on thy skin to a forceful conclusion. This would have been a particularly like morning dew, / And while thy willing soul transpires pleasing conceit to a Renaissance readership, who would have / At every pore with instant fires, ” been well-educated in the techniques of classical rhetoric and Lines 45-46: “though we cannot make our sun / Stand apt to recognize their use in poetry. still, yet we will make him run.” Where Syllogism appears in the poem: Lines 1-2: “Had we but world enough and time, / This ©2019 LitCharts LLC v.006 www.LitCharts.com Page 14  Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com time—survives the flood, along with a male and a female coyness, lady, were no crime. ” member of each animal species, riding out the storm for forty Lines 21-24: “But at my back I always hear / Time’s days and nights in an ark built especially for the purpose. After wingèd chariot hurrying near; / And yonder all before us the flood passes, Noah and his family see a rainbow in the sky, a lie / Deserts of vast eternity. ” promise between God and man that such a devastating event Lines 33-37: “Now therefore, while the youthful hue / will never happen again. The flood is thus the starting point of Sits on thy skin like morning dew, / And while thy willing human history: it erases everything that happened before it soul transpires / At every pore with instant fires, / Now and allows humanity to restart. Marvell's speaker invokes it let us sport us while we may, ” here precisely because of its position at the start of human history: it indicates that he would love the mistress from the very beginning of record history. VOCABULARY Conversion of the Jews (Line 10) - The flood marks the beginning of Biblical history. For some Christians—in Marvell's Coyness (Line 2) - The word "coy" describes a series of time and in the present—the conversion of the Jews to contradictory behaviors. Someone who's being coy is Christianity marks its endpoint. In Romans 11:25-26a, Saint simultaneously flirtatious and withholding, expressing interest Paul writes, "Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the but refusing to act on it. In contemporary English, one might full number of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be describe it as "playing hard to get"—which is certainly how the saved..." Though there is considerable debate about how to speaker of the poem interprets the mistress's behavior. interpret this statement, some Christians believe that it is a However, coyness is a matter of interpretation: one might form of prophecy, indicating that the Jews will convert to plausibly wonder if the mistress is truly being coy or simply Christianity immediately before the End of Days, the Second trying to let the speaker down easily. Since the speaker gives us Coming of Christ. For the speaker, it is a convenient marker for little information about the mistress, it is difficult for a reader the end of Biblical time. He would love his mistress from the to judge her intentions or her behavior. earliest point in history to its last point—if only he could live Ganges (Line 5) - The Ganges is a river in the Indian forever. subcontinent. It flows along the border between the countries Vegetable (Line 11) - English speakers generally use the word of India and Bangladesh. The river is sacred to Hindus, and is "vegetable" as a noun—referring to things like potatoes and important in various religious rituals. One may wonder how cucumbers. But the speaker uses the word as an adjective: it much Marvell knew about the religious and cultural significance describes the characteristics of his love. This is an unusual but of the river; he wrote at a time when there was not yet much not unprecedented usage. Indeed, it derives from a direct contact between India and England (though India philosophical distinction—important in medieval and eventually became an important British colony). He invokes the Renaissance medical science—first drawn by Aristotle that river simply as a distant place, associated in his imagination distinguishes between vegetative, animal, and rational spirits. with the foreign and the exotic—without much interest in or According to Aristotle, all life possesses at least one of the consideration for its importance to Indian culture. spirits, and the higher animals possess more of them. Human Humber (Line 7) - The Humber is a river and tidal estuary in beings possess all three; animals pos