Andrew Marvell"s "To His Coy Mistress"

Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" is a plea from a lover to his lady love to forgo her coyness so that they can celebrate love as long as it lasts. Sexual love is advocated here using incorrigible logic. In other words, bodily instinct is reinforced by the aid of mental reasoning; the statement is a paradox in itself with the juxtaposition of two complementary entities. Primarily, as love is an emotion in opposition to all reason and logic.

The lover assures his beloved that all would be fine had the world been under their thumb and time were endless. If that was the case, then they would have to fish for ways to while away their time. She would seek out rubies from the shores of the Ganges and he would sit idly by the side of the Humber. He claims that he would then love her a decade before the flood. He emphasizes through this parabole that he would love her even before the heralding of civilization. She could turn down his love forever, but it would last till the conversion of Jews on the Day of Judgment, an event deemed impossible. He ascertains that his vegetable love (or love at the lowest existence) would multiply vaster than empires. He would devote a thousand years singing hosannas to her eyes, another century would be spent gazing at her forehead and not less than two hundred years would be required to extol her breast. An age may be spent in showering accolades on each part of her body and ultimately she may lay her heart bare to him.

Time, the Universal enemy of love and beauty is yet again demonified here. The effect of Time is diminished here by going into raptures of love and thereby creating the illusion of Time standing still. The poet through the effect of love magnifies Time and Space in the first stanza. The second portrays Time as a tyrant driving at lightening speed in a chariot. The desire to live and relive every moment is reiterated in this stanza. The phrase 'deserts of vast eternity' rather than pointing to immortality suggest hollow prospects devoid of life. Eventually it would be Time that would consume her beauty and the worms in the grave that would devour her chastity. The best prospect for her is to submit herself to the poet. The poet echoes the idea that the concept of virginity is "a hollow ideal based on the fact that postponing pleasure is better than enjoying it". The poet seems to imply that the past cannot be revisited, and the future cannot be anticipated-so live in the present and make the most of