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: : : Can anyone let me know, what the poem "to this coy mistress" means stanza by : : : stanza? : 48; in which they will be buried and “worms” eating their dead bodies – Marvell is trying to convey his message of urgency and mortality. : The urgency is that of time flying by. He seems to be trying to remind his lady that time is of essence in this life. Thus, his seduction moves into a higher gear as he pressures her with dire warnings of what time will do to them. He visualized being dead and lying in a grave with worms everywhere. Their bodies “turn to dust” and “into ashes all my lust”. He is in a sense warning her too return his mortal love or face having never loved before she dies and turns to dust. : The talk of deserts and turning to ashes and dust implies a total lack of water. This is opposite to the first part of the poem that is awash with images of flowing water. Perhaps it is symbolic of his ever flowing love and a never-ending life that he dreams of, where time goes on forever. The dry imagery here seems to be denoting a sort of end. The knowledge that he is ... : : ... ’s poem due to the images he portrays. It also moves far away from the traditional love poetry and trying to woo a woman. Death has a strong influence on the second stanza and is to be feared because everyone is scared of dying. There is also the idea of growing old and being lonely; something that scares everyone as no one wants to be lonely. Another image he portrays is that a lowly worm will take away her ity when she is dead rather than him; this is a very shocking and disturbing image for her as he tries to make her feel uneasy. Marvell uses the word “quaint” in this stanza, which suggests that he is patronizing the lady and proves he is playing on her fears, as he has little respect for her; he talks down to her. He tries to scare her into bed. The poet uses strong stressed words to make them more powerful e.g.: “Desarts of vast eternity.” : In the last stanza of The Flea, Donne succeeds in his argument and concludes the statements he presented. In the third stanza we learn that she has killed the flea and gone against everything he has said. She has been sac religious against God and committed three crimes and proven by the blood what the poet intended – that is u ... : : Just imagine ladies, a man so kind and sweet that he wishes he had an eternity to admire you. A guy who says, "An hundred years should go to praise thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze; two hundred to adore each , but thirty thousand to the rest, an age at least to every part, and the last age should show the heart." Sounds wonderful doesn't it? Well, guess what. This guy is saying all of this because he only wants a physical relationship. : After reading Andrew Marvell's poem, several questions should arise. How would you feel if a guy spent so much time staring at your chest? And when you think of your own special attributes, does your forehead appear on that list? Probably not. Also notice that the heart was the last thing on the list, not the first like it should be. : Andrew Marvell is trying to woo his mistress into having a physical relationship with him. He employs one of the most prevalent themes in the 17th Century, that of carpe diem, and presents his argument in three parts: : 1) If we had the time, I could give you the adulation that you deserve. But... : 2) We don't have the all the time in the world; we are in the prime of our lives and as time pes, you will only grow older and uglier. You should enjoy your youthful attributes while you still have them. After all, it's either me or the worms. (He really says this...check it out for yourself!) So... : 3) Let's seize the day, so to speak. : : By merging time and lust, Marvell was, 350 years ago, evoking a modern trope --- moving as far as possible away from the creed of those drab Puritans who dominated 17th Century England. Furthermore, not unlike those of us who grew up under the nuclear shadow (the Black Death was everywhere about) --- we well know the argument: such petty restraint might well be next to useless : The Argument of the Poem Andrew Marvell in “To His Coy Mistress,” presents an argument of love to readers. The argument comes from the speaker, a man to a woman, or to we the audience. The first half of the poem is the speaker trying to woo her. Then the speaker says that they are running out of time and death is upon them. Marvell’s argument begins with if we had all the time in the world then we could take the time to love: Had we but world enough, and time, this coyness, lady, were no crime. We would sit down, and think which way to walk, and p our long love’s day. (1-4) Then he tries to prove to this shy woman the amount of time he would spend admiring her. He says that he would love her from the beginning of time until Judgment Day: Love you ten years before the Flood, and you should, if you please, refuse till the conversion of the Jews. (8-9) He has a large, slow growing nature of affection, and he will spend all of his years admiring all the parts of her body: My vegetable love should grow vaster than empires, and more slow; and hundred years should go to praise thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze; two hundred to adore each , but thirty thousand to the rest; an age at least to every part, and the last age should show your heart. (11-18) He says that the length of time is all right due to her beauty: For, lady, you deserve this state, nor would I love at lower rate. (19) The argument now changes to its darker side. Marvell uses metaphors to say that time is ping by quickly and death awaits them: Time’s winged chariot hurrying near; and yonder all before us lie deserts of vast eternity. (22-24) He makes reference to a grave and a burial service saying that it is an unsuitable place for lovers to embrace: Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound my echoing song; then worms shall try that long-preserved ity, and your quaint honor turn to dust, and into ashes all my lust: the grave’s is a fine a private place, but none, I think, do there embrace. (26-32) The final part of the poem gives reference to . He speaks of the youthful freshness of her skin and of her pion. Next he uses a metaphor, which can be translated into pouncing upon each other: And now like enormous birds of prey, rather at once our time devour than languish in his slow-chapped power. (38-40) He is seemingly telling her what he wants, asking if he can enter into her womb: Let us roll all our strength and all our sweetness up into a ball, and tear our pleasures with rough strife thorough the iron gates of life: thus, though we cannot make our sun stand still, yet we will make him run. (41-46) The sun represents time, and man cannot move the sun, therefore, he cannot make time stand still proving mans inability to live forever. The last line states that they can make whatever they want out of life, or make their own sun run. He went from trying to get her in his bed by displaying his utmost admiration of her, to death is right around the corner. Marvell was saying that you cannot cheat death or time, all you can do is make the most of it. He uses the word “Now” to make a point that life is now. Ironically, Marvell gave the image of light and the image of brightness, with his use of the sun and the “instant fires,” to give a luster and to show the idea of her giving up her shyness or coyness. This contrasted with the darkness, and essential remorse that life is not eternal, which is the key to getting what he wants from her. Word Count: 659 : : ow shall we begin to parse the extravagant rhetoric in the first verse paragraph? Exotic location: "Indian Ganges." Hyperbolic expanses of time: "an hundred years," "two hundred," "thirty thousand." Elevated language: rhymed couplets, stately tetrameter, refined grammatical mood (dominated by the future subjunctive). The poem is addressed to the speaker's "mistress," that is, a lady to whom courtesy and courtly convention and erotic longing attribute a superordinate status, a power to command. She is said to be "coy," that is, strategically withholding. She is thus imagined as capable of calculation and of extracting erotic compliment at a high "rate." The poet professes to be more than willing to provide what she would have, but surely it is less than complimentary to charge the lady with calculation. "Coyness" in Marvell's era might be used to connote mere reticence, but the less neutral connotation was already coming into ascendancy; it would take a very innocent lady indeed to gaze into the mirror of Marvell's poem and see herself figured as unaffectedly "shy." We may note, while we're at it, the conuous third-person possessive in the title of the poem: to his, not my, coy mistress. The body of the poem is written in the first and second person; the loved addresses his lady directly. And yet in the title of the poem, he coolly acknowledges another audience. For whose amusement is this lady being wooed? : And then there is the extended subjunctive: hypothesis contrary to fact. Had we world enough and time... but we do not. Taking everything back before it is given, the poet inventories the lavish forms of courtship he "would," but will not, be happy to perform. The inventory itself, if truth be told, is rather perfunctory: ten years, a hundred, etc.; your eyes, your forehead, etc. "Vegetable love" is wonderful—though what exactly does it mean? (Scholarly annotation about the ancient division of souls—vegetative, sensitive, and rational—falls flat somehow.) "Till the conversion of the Jews" (i.e. till the eve of Apocalypse) is better yet. It is perhaps too good. The apocalyptic vista rhymes so neatly with the lady's scruple ("Jews," "refuse") that the poem's wide disproportions are made to seem preposterous. It is not chiefly lack of time and "world" that prevent the suitor from suing in the heightened manner dictated by poetic convention; it is aesthetic disdain. The suitor is burlesquing the very expansiveness with which he is expected to sue. Expected by whom? By the lady, or so her lover unchivalrously implies. It is as though a woman of our own day were charged with basing her fantasy life upon the romances of the daytime soaps. Marvell's coy mistress finds herself accused not only of manipulative affectation but also of frank bad taste. What kind of woman would be wooed like this? : The tone of insult deepens in the second section of the poem: : But at my back I always hear : Time's wingèd 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 ity, : And your quaint honor turn to dust, : And into ashes all my lust: : The grave's a fine and private place, : But none, I think, do there embrace. : Following the slightly acerbic stipulation with which he concluded the first section of his wooing speech (I think too highly of your deserts and of myself to love "at lower rate"), the lover puts forth his official explanation for refusing to woo by the book. And as if to show what he could do if he would, he "explains" in a flight of eloquence. Far from affording us dignified or delectable leisure, he says, time is a "wingèd chariot" hastening toward our end. The only vastness at our disposal is the vastness of the afterlife. The afterlife affords no vistas of erotic or moral "desert," but merely the emptiness of a desert. The logic of the lover's argument is the logic of carpe diem: "seize (or savor) the day." It was a well-worn logic in the Renaissance, as it had been since the time of Horace. "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may," wrote Marvell's contemporary Robert Herrick, "Old time is still a-flying;/ And this same flower that smiles today,/ Tomorrow will be dying." Counseling a maiden to seize the day was also a well-worn stratagem of seducers, as the conclusion of Herrick's poem makes clear: : Then be not coy, but use your time, : And while ye may, go marry; : For, having lost but once your prime, : You may forever tarry. : (This poem is brazenly addressed "To the s, to Make Much of Time.") : Like Herrick, Marvell is quite explicit about the unlovely threat his hurry-up implies. In neither poet do we find the faithful suitor's profession, "To me you shall always be lovely." Nor even, "I shall love you forever despite the ravages of age." Not at all. Explicated for the benefit of s in general, or a coy mistress in particular, desire is found to be quite as ruthless as time. Desire has a short half-life; ladies must get while the getting is good. Lest the lewdness of the insult be lost on the lady, Marvell introduces a pair of genital insinuations. You scruple to preserve your bodily intactness? the lover taunts. You haven't a prayer; it's either me or the worms. Nor is "quaint" honor half so fastidious as it at first appears to be: Chaucer used "queynte"—and Renaissance authors used it too—to denote the female pudendum. : Now that both mistress and lovemaking have been quite stripped of their pretensions, now that the lady knows just where she stands, both in the general marketplace and in her lover's particular regard, the lover unleashes his most fevered proposition: : 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. : Note the driven enjambments: "all / Our sweetness," "sun / Stand still." This is forward motion with a vengeance. Not turtle doves, but "birds of prey." Not gilded portals, but "iron gates." The lover proposes a world in which the alternatives are not so much "eat or be eaten," but "eat and be eaten" or "be eaten alone." Not one creature is not caught in the mortal machinery; only with violence can the day (and the initiative) be seized. :  : he poet's bravado is undeniably exhilarating, and yet we may return to the question that Dryden implicitly asked of Donne: Can this poem really be after what it purports to be after? Can it, as a seduction poem, by even the wildest stretch of imagination be designed to work? What kind of woman would be successfully wooed like this? Either, I would respectfully suggest, she must be a very stupid one, one so dull to insult and so eager to be swept off her feet that she sucbs to her fate obliviously, or she must be a very clever one indeed, one willing to join the lover in his high-spirited contempt for convention, one capable of discerning the compliment behind the ostensible slur. This lady—the second one—would be a woman to whom the poet might signal above the head, as it were, of the foolish figure he playfully pretends to take her for. It is this second lady in whom I prefer to believe, and whom I believe the Marvellian poem proposes: a worthy and active partner in intellect, in appetite, in irreverent conversation, and in bed. : : To His Coy Mistress : by Andrew Marvell : Had we, but world enough, and time, : his coyness, Lady, were no crime. : We would sit down, and think which way : To walk, and p 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 , : 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 ity, : And your quaint honor turn 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. : 

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