Andrew Marvell's To His Coy Mistress

Andrew Marvell's To His Coy Mistress To His Coy Mistress: This Seventeenth Century poem by Andrew Marvell

(1621-1678) is a "carpe diem" ("Seize the day") poem. Its theme is

that life is short and time is passing. The persona takes the loved

one to task for not yielding to his persuasions to make love to him.

It is another poem about power. The woman is holding power over the

man by refusing his entreaties. This kind of poem was very popular in

Marvel's time. It does not necessarily describe a real situation.

In the first part of the poem, the persona complains that if time were

in plentiful supply, the woman's modest shyness would not be wrong.

She could go to the River Ganges in India, a very exotic place, and

celebrate her virginity ("rubies" are symbols of preserved virginity),

while he would lament her loss beside the Humber, a far less

attractive place. Marvell came from Hull, which stands on the Humber,

so would know it well. In Hull, outside the Church of the Holy

Trinity, is a statue of Marvell with these lines from the poem written

on its plinth.

It was believed that "the flood" would never happen again, because,

after Noah's Flood, God promised that there would be no more and put a

rainbow in the sky as a reminder of this (See Genesis c. 9, v. 12) and

the Conversion of the Jews was expected to happen at the end of the

world, so in saying that he would love her and she would refuse before

these things came to pass, he is saying they would go on forever.

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...e her beauty still has

its youthful softness and her passion its "instant fires" (which

contrast with the "ashes" of his burnt out lust in the last section),

enjoy their love to the full, hunting down time to "devour" and take

pleasure in it, rather than succumbing to its slow but inevitable

erosion of their being. The image of the birds of prey continues as

they "tear our pleasures" the flesh of the prey they have hunted, even

s they pass through the "iron gates" of life. Time is now seen as

their prison, but one which they can defy by embracing the pleasure of

one another. They cannot make time still, as Joshua discovered in the

Book of Judges (c. 10, v 12-13) and Zeus discovered in Greek

mythology, but they can ensure they enjoy its passing and "make him

run". They must, as we said at the beginning, "Seize the day".