Andrew Marvel :" To His Coy Mistress"

Andrew Marvel :" To His Coy Mistress"

The theme of the poem is (Carpe diem) i.e." seize the day". He is trying to convince his girl to respond to his love.  The poem is divided into two parts, the first one lines 1 to 20, the second part is from 21 to the end. The first part moves very slowly while the second one runs very quickly.

The first part is an if clause. The lover says that her coyness (shyness) would have been justified if they had enough space and time in life. If they had that, she could have occupied herself by searching for rubies on the banks of the Indian River, the Gaga, while he would complain about his unfulfilled love on the banks of the Humber in England. If they had enough time, he would have started loving her ten years before the great flood, while she could refuse his requests till the Judgment Day when the Jews might agree to be converted to Christianity. If they had really enough time, he would spend a hundred years in praising her eyes and gazing on her forehead; he would spend two hundred years in admiring each part of her body because she really deserves so much praise, says the lover.

But all this is not possible; the lover goes on to say. Time is passing at a very fast pace, and he always hears behind him the chariot of "Time" travelling at a very great speed to overtake them, and eventually they have to face "the deserts of vast eternity". After some years, her beauty will no longer be found on this earth. She will lie in her marble tomb, and he would no longer be there to sing his love-song. There, in the grave, worms will attack her long- preserved virginity. All her nice sense of honour will then turn to dust, and all his desires to make love to her will then turn to ashes. The grave is a fine and private place, but nobody can enjoy the pleasure of love-making there.

Therefore, it would be appropriate for them to enjoy the pleasures of love when there is still time, when her skin is still youthful and fresh, and when her responsive soul is still burning with a desire for love making. They should, like amorous birds of prey, devour the pleasure of  love, which now time still permits them to enjoy, rather than suffer from the pain of unsatisfied love. They should roll all their strength and all their sweetness into one ball and shoot it through the iron gates of life. If they cannot arrest the passage of time, they can at least quicken time's speed of passing.

Question: Describe the imagery and conceits employed in the poem.

There are a number of concrete pictures in the poem and a whole series of metaphysical conceits(extended metaphors). The idea of the lover that, having enough time and space at their disposal, they would be able to wonder as far apart as the Indian Ganga  and the English Humber is fantastic.Then the lover's saying that he would love his mistress from a time ten years before the flood and would spend hundreds and thousands of years in admiring and adoring various parts of her body constitutes another metaphysical conceit. The picture of time's winged chariot hurrying and coming closer and closer to overtake the lovers vividly brings before our minds the rapid passing of time. The picture of the woman in her grave and the worms attacking her long-preserved virginity and her honour turning to dust, are conceits because worms are here regarded as beings capable of seducing a woman. Then we have a metaphysical conceit in the concluding stanza, where the mistress' willing soul is depicted as giving out instant fires at every pore and the lovers are imagined as rolling their strength and their sweetness into one ball and treating their pleasures with rough strife through the iron gates of life