Question- Write a summary of the poem "To His Coy Mistress".

Answer -

Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" is a carpe diem poem in which the speaker attempts to conarince his beloved to seize the day and act on her passion. In the first stanza, the speaker reassures his beloved that he would spend forever courting her if he had at time. In the second stanza, the speaker laments the brevity of life and darkly intones that death comes for everyone. In the third and final stanza the speaker completes his argument by urging his beloved to fight back against time and indulge her passions while she is still young.

Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" is a carpe diem poem in which the speaker urges his mistress to submit to desire and sleep with him. He argues that if she continues in her Coy behaviours, they will too grow old for love and time, whom Marvell personifies, will defeat them. The poem is written in rhyming couplets and is divided into three stanzas.

In the first, the speaker details what he would do, if he and his lady had "but word enough and time". If they had infinite life spans, he explains, it would not be a "crime" for her to be so coy. His love could stretch far into the past- "ten years before the flood" and she could continue to refuse him "till the conversion of the Jews", or the end of the world. The speaker would be able to grow his love for her "vaster than empires and more slow". In a world without time, he would be able to spend "an age at least" admiring every part of her, from her body to her heart. He admits that this is the admiration and love that she deserves, and he would gladly give it to if he could.

However, this is only a fantasy, as Marvell makes clear with coordinating conjunction "but" at the beginning of the second stanza. The speaker is aware that "time's winged chariot" is always in pursuit of the two lovers each day that his mistress meets his advances with her coyness is a day closer to their death and ensuring entrances into "deserts of vast eternity". In death, she will no longer be beautiful, and he shall no longer have the ability to praise her. Likewise, her; virginity and "honour" (which she has sought to maintain), as well as his "lust", will be food for worms and come to nothing. The grave, he remarks ironically, is a "fine and private place", but not one in which people tend to "embrace".

The third stanza exhorts the beloved to action. While they are still young able, and desirable he urges, they should "sport" while they may and "Rather at once our time devour. Than languish in his slow-chapped power".

By seizing the initiative and enthusiastically embracing life and pleasure, they can win a victory over destructive time; "Thus, though we can not make our sun/stand still, yet we will make him run".

The final stanza in which he urges action, presents a problematic vision of love. He compares himself and his lover to sportive animals, specifically "amorous birds of prey", an odd image to use in attempting to win his lady. The love that he describes seems rough and violent: He suggests that they "devour" their time and says; Let us ....../ Tear our pleasures with rough strife/through the vision grates of life. The lines have a rather strange and unromantic ring and qualify the speaker's ostensibly enthusiastic description of love. Love as described in this stanza is not conventionally sweet and sentimental but rather vaguely dangerous and threatening beneath the surface, Marvell seems to be issuing a warning as much as an exhortation.

More than a love poem, "To His Coy Mistress" is a meditation on time and death. Marvell aramatizes the questions: What are the implications of physically and morality? In using time most wisely, should one focus on this life or the afterlife? Marvell avoids a simple, conventional answer and the poem works well as an argument for either view.

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