A Review of Andrew Marvell's To His Coy Mistress

Andrew Marvell knows that the things that we want enough and that elude us are worth waiting for, but the more time we spend watching and admiring them from a far means the less time we will have for the worldly pleasures of them, so we must take charge of our moments. Marvell's poem, "To His Coy Mistress," is meant to seduce and hurry its reader into taking action. The poem can be broken down into three stanzas, with each stanza being indicated by an indent. Marvell uses the first stanza to relax the reader's regards of him, coaxing her into being more perceptive to his suggestions through positive intermittence. The narrator prompts the reader to take action in the second stanza , reminding her of their mortality and the limited amount of actual time they have for one another. In the last stanza he gives her an alternative to being left unfulfilled in death's tomb; she could join herself with him in a physical effort and make their mortality chase them as they enjoy one another in the flesh.

The narrators talks of elaborate gestures of time, saying that if time did not matter and had no boundaries "an age at least to every part" (17) would be spent devouring the aesthetics of her. He mentions vast ages of time that would be spent on each physical aspect of her to truly behold their beauty, with the last age being spent to get to know her heart. He assures her of his never ending love for her in two biblical references to the beginning and end of time. He pronounces that he would love her "ten years before the flood" (8), an event relative to the beginning of creation in the bible, where God floods over the earth to rid it of all the wicked people saving only righteous Noah, his family and an ark of two of every type of animal. He tells her that she could continue to refuse him if she pleases until the end of time with the conversion of the Jews, which pertains to the signs of Armageddon, a religious prediction of events leading up to the time of the end. Even in between these states he reassures her that his love would still be there lasting in a vegetative state "growing vaster than empires, and more slow" (12). All of this elaboration is an attempt to let her know that his lust is not all that plays a part in his wanting but also a respect for her knowing that "she deserves this state" and that he could not love her at a "lower rate" (20).

Dramatically starting off the second stanza, the narrator states that behind his back he hears "time's winged chariot hurrying near" (22), reminding him of his own mortality and the limitless deserts of vast eternity that lay before them. The awareness is there that at the end of that stretch of space, lay only a marble tomb. The narrator tells her that he thinks "the grave's a fine and private place, but none, I think, do there embrace" (31), and calls up the image of worms trying at the virginity that she held on to till death. This can psychologically suggest to her that the possibilities are to lose her virginity with him in pleasure or to preserve it in her odd honors and have the worms mall over her corpse because once time's end is met, both love in all its quaint honor and lust in its burning flame turn to nothing but ashes and dust. Marvell leads the reader to believe that if they forfeit life's physical pleasures they will be left unfulfilled and without a chance to remedy those regrets.

To take his words away from despair, and there scare tactic, in the third stanza he recalls some of the gaieties from the idealistic period of the first and gives the coy mistress an alternative to the negative pictures he had painted about their mortality and death bed regrets. He asks her to join herself with him while her "willing soul transpires at every pour with instant fires" ( 35), so that she can enjoy the pleasures of passion with him while "the youthful hue still sits upon her skin like morning dew" (34), since the beauty of youth fades with age. He wishes for them "to sport them while they may" (37) so that they can live in the moment and strut around in front of everyone the joy and strength of what their being rolled up into one ball will bring. It is in this way that he suggests that they can devour their time; in this way that they momentarily stop it and live in it rather than be trapped in misery's wanting only to "languish is his slow-chapt power" (40) as the time for actions slips by them.

Just because we know something is worth waiting for does not always mean that we should wait because we may lose the chance. Our idealistic views on things can sometimes get in the way of our fulfillment because they are not always realistic. Sometimes we just need to be ravenous and to take what is wanted from life in order to tear "thorough the iron gates of life" (44) and try to postpone the inevitable. The view is that by joining ourselves with another person it will give us the strength and pleasures that we need to enrich our lives, and the hope to prolong our lives, by making mortality chase us since we can not stop him from setting our life's sun.