Analysis of To His Coy Mistress

"To His Coy Mistress" is a very interesting poem. The main plot of the poem is about this guy that tries to pick up a girl for the night. The poem does not tell about the setting. I assumed that it was in a bar, because of the way he talked to her and that is where most guys go to pick up a girl for the evening. We see this poem through the eyes of the guy, by doing this Marvell gives a look into his mind and what he is thinking. This helps to bring the reader into the poem. It allows the reader to get into his mind as the poem goes along. We begin to see the guy develop his words more and more until eventually by the third stanza he is pretty desperate.

In the first stanza we see the guy begin to make a move. He begins to tell her all these sweet lines about how he could spend eternity with her. For instance, he says on line 11, "My vegtable love should grow vastar than empires, and more slow;...." In these two lines he is trying to tell her how his love will grow more and more everytime he sees her. He will love her until the end of time. A few lines later he continues to talk about his everlasting love. He begins to divide his love up between her body parts. He promises to her that he will dedicate a hundred years to her eyes. Then he tells her that he would dedicate two hundred to each breasts. That last line about the breasts I thought was pretty funny. Here you begin to see how his mind begins to shift toward sex. He begins to shift his thoughts from her eyes to her body. He is very nonchalant about it. After the comment about her breasts he says and thirty to the rest. I can just see this guy talking to her. He puts a little emphasis on the breasts comment, and then I picture him mumbling, "oh yea....and thirty thousand to the rest." The guy is only out for one thing, and that is sex. He is trying to be smooth about it, but in the next stanza we begin to see his patience giving out.

In the second stanza we begin to see the guy's personality shift.