To his Coy Mistress
by Andrew Marvell
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 winged 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 preserv'd 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 am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
Andrew Marvell: Poem analysis » To his Coy Mistress » Commentary on To his Coy Mistress
The poem is divided into three clearly defined section parts:
- The way the lovers could behave if they had all the time in the world (ll.1-20)
- Reminder that life is short and that death will bring an end to lovemaking (ll.21-32).
- The need to make the most of the brief time available (ll.33-46).
Part one
The poem starts with a conditional: ‘Had we but...Time’. The implication is that the lovers do not, setting the poem at the opposite extreme from Donne's The Sunne Rising, which boldly asserts that the lovers control their own time, and the sun is their servant. Marvell’s verbs go into the conditional tense: ‘would sit’, ‘should'st ... find’, ‘should ... refuse ... grow ... whatever’. So although his suggestions seem positive enough, they are an illusion.
The suggestions are, of course, comic absurdities. This is the form of Metaphysical wit that Marvell uses for his conceits. He would be willing to go back almost to the beginning of time in the Bible and ‘Love you ten years before the Flood’, a reference to Noah's flood (Genesis 7:17-24). She, on the other hand, could delay her response ‘till the Conversion of the Jews’, an idea which Marvell uses to symbolise an unknown future timescale. His love could be ‘vegetable’: which will keep growing and reproducing itself - slowly. The fact that it is one of the lower forms of life is part of the irony. As is the fact that we are irresistably reminded through his image of the speaker's (actually almost immediate) erection.
Marvell parodies the Elizabethan love convention of listing the mistress's bodily parts, and praising each one separately – eyes, forehead, breasts – by giving absurd amounts of time to be spent in praising each part. Heslyly hints at ‘the rest’. Each shall have an ‘age’, referring to Greek mythology in which human history could be divided into ‘ages’: gold, silver, bronze.
Part two
This is a powerful section on time and death. The carpe diem (‘seize the day’) theme is strong, as it is in Marlowe's The Passionate Shepherd, or more genteelly in Robert Herrick's Gather ye Rosebuds. The tempo and mood suddenly change. ‘Times winged Charriott’ sounds quite military, in pursuit of the lovers. With the prospect of ‘Desarts of vast Eternity’, the vegetable image is replaced by total barrenness. This leads on to talk of dust, to which her ‘quaint Honour’ will be reduced. ‘Quaint’ contains a play on words. In the seventeenth century it meant proud and also ‘whimsical’, as it does today; it may also be a pun on ‘queynt’, which in the medieval period, referred to a woman’s sexual organs. Her ‘Virginity’ in death will be as barren: it has produced nothing but a facade. The reality of the grave confronts us as bleakly as it does in Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet or some of the Jacobean dramas that followed.
Part three
Having mocked the Elizabethans in Section 1, then agreed with them in Section 2, Marvell follows their advice in Section 3. The Latin carpe diem (‘seize the day’) motif is echoed in such violent phrases as ‘like ... birds of prey’, ‘our Time devour’ and ‘tear our Pleasures’. The sense of struggle is strong: either time controls us, or we it. So there comes the defiant ‘yet we will make him [the sun] run’, echoing Donne's poem, a defiance which, we feel, stems from the frustration at his inability to make love to his lady.
- Compare Marvell’s To his Coy Mistress with Donne's The Sunne Rising
- What are the biggest similarities and differences?
- How does Marvell convey
- the idea of time almost stopping?
- the idea of time rushing along?
- Do you think this is a very masculine poem?
- What suggests it is so?
- If you were the one being addressed by Marvell, would you be persuaded or put off?
- Is the poem meant to be persuasive?
- Today's New International Version
- 17For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth. 18The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. 19They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. 20The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than fifteen cubits. 21Every living thing that moved on the earth perished - birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and the entire human race. 22Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. 23Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; human beings and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark. 24The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days.
- King James Version
- 17And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth. 18And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters. 19And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered. 20Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. 21And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: 22All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. 23And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark. 24And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.
No comments:
Post a Comment