To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell summary

 

Had we but world enough and time,

This coyness, lady, were no crime.

We would sit down, and think which way

To walk, and pass our long love’s day.

Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side

Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide

Of Humber would complain. I would

Love you ten years before the flood,

And you should, if you please, refuse

Till the conversion of the Jews.

My vegetable love should grow

Vaster than empires and more slow;

An hundred years should go to praise

Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;

Two hundred to adore each breast,

But thirty thousand to the rest;

An age at least to every part,

And the last age should show your heart.

For, lady, you deserve this state,

Nor would I love at lower rate.

       But at my back I always hear

Time’s 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 virginity,

And your quaint honour 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.

 

The central theme of the poem is set at the very outset of the poem, that the time is so fleeting and transitory, hence people should enjoy youth in every moment or one should “seize the day.” The speaker presents his “argument” to his beloved, a young woman who is extremely shy and reluctant to indulge in love making. The speaker states that coyness would be acceptable if the time is endless and the world was big enough to accommodate all of his admiration for her.

The frustrated lover employs certain remarkable hyperbole to express his emotional state as well as the beauty of his beloved. The rivers mentioned in the poem strikingly conveys the physical as well as the psychological distance between these lovers. These rivers, Genges in India and Humber in England can also be treated as the metaphysical conceits in the poem, as it logically conveys the emotional state of the poet.

The speaker mentions eschatological or “end of the world” events to compare the allotted time the great Flood by which God cleanses the earth in the Bible or the conversion of the Jews popularly thought to happen immediately prior to the Last Judgment. Similarly the lady may realise his love and love him back finally. These extended  comparisons stress the unimaginably large amount of time it would take to adequately define the speaker’s love for his mistress.

The speaker creates the metaphor or conceit “vegetable love” that grows very slowly but amasses enough bulk to be larger than a great dynasty or empire. Because of the depth of his love, the speaker’s “vegetable love” covers much of the earth’s surface, as did the British empire during its peak in the nineteenth century.

The speaker expresses his emotional intensity by using a series of hyperboles, Such as  the 100 years to praise the beauty of her face, 200 years for each breast, and 30,000 years devoted to the rest of her body.  The speaker devotes at least one generation to praise of each part of his mistress, especially to praise of her pure heart, which is saved for last because of its special place as the seat of amorous passion. This kind of exaggeration resembles and perhaps parodies the style of Petrarchan sonnet writers, who used standard metaphors to describe their mistresses. However, Marvell’s comparisons are notable for their excessiveness and originality.

In this close of section I, the speaker introduces a monetary metaphor: loving at a certain “rate,” like an interest rate charged by a bank for lending money. The speaker implies that the mistress deserves this “state” of lavish praise because of her beauty.

Then comes the logical turn of the poem, shifting from wild exaggeration to dark and unpleasant images of the grave. The subject of death intrudes into this love poem, thus shifting the mood in to an intimidation. Time is personified as a driver in a chariot. The verb choice of “hurrying” introduces anxiety and darkness into a formerly light and extravagant, lyric poem. Time is represented as the great deadener in the poem.

The image of vast deserts symbolises the hopeless romantic life of the speaker. Deserts are hot and barren, a denial of the life-giving processes of love and sexual activity.

The speaker also emphasizes the loss of beauty that happens to all people over time, especially to the mistress. The “marble vault” is the resting place for the deceased mistress’s corpse. The speaker’s song of praise will go unheard and unsung when death levels them both; thus the implication is that death is a final stopping place beyond which no magnificent love can escape.

The speaker’s strange image of the worm penetrating the virgin corpse as it consumes the rotting flesh shocks many readers. The point is that such preserved virtues mean nothing when stretched over the expanse of time. Thus, the speaker offers another persuasive reason for the mistress to give in. “Quaint honor” reflects that fact that virginity will seem a quaint but useless treasure at the end of life.

With the close of section II, the poem uses understatement and irony, praising the grave as a “fine” and “private” place. This is a perfect transition to the carpe diem theme.

The speaker  returns to the theme of youthful lust. The speaker uses imperative mood verbs that give commands, admonistion, and urgent directions to his mistress. While youth is present, the mistress’s skin glows in vitality like the morning dew. The striking use of the poetic device simile marks the ephemeral nature of the time and each moments should be enjoyed.

The speaker makes use of a set of harsh images that lend intensity and force to his expression. The simile of “birds of prey” is an unexpected choice for a love poem; some might consider it bizarre for the poem to compare a lover and his mistress to birds of prey who want to eat, not be eaten by Time. The comparison says that the speaker wants to devour Time like a hawk devours a rabbit caught in the fields rapidly, in the heat of the moment, unthinkingly and instinctively. Time with his “slow-chapt power” is imagined as slowly chewing up the world and its people; thus the speaker implies he and his mistress are in a desperate fight against Time.

In these lines, the poem uses the metaphor of a cannonball (round metal stone) of “strength” and “sweetness” rolled into a concentrated package of energy that “tears” through the barriers of restraint. The juxtaposition of “strife” with “pleasures” indicates the ferocious breakthrough of the speaker’s argument winning over his mistress.

In the concluding couplet, the speaker and his mistress triumphantly turn back the destructive forces of Time, eagerly eating Time instead of being eaten by it. The speaker and his mistress force the sun to race them instead of passively begging the sun to stand still. 

 

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