To His Coy Mistress Analysis

To His Coy Mistress Analysis Dramatic Monologue, Iambic Tetrameter "To His Coy Mistress" takes the form of a dramatic monologue, which pretty much means what it sounds like. The speaker of the poem does all the talking, which makes this a monologue, a speech by a single character. But, because he isn’t just talking to himself, but to another fictional character, the mistress, it’s "dramatic" – hence the term "dramatic monologue." Although the reader might identify with the speaker in a dramatic monologue, or even with the silent character addressed, there is always the sense that the reader eavesdrops on an intimate conversation. This sense is heightened in "To His Coy Mistress," because the speaker doesn’t give us any personal or biographical information about himself or the mistress to create separation between the characters and the readers. The poem’s meter is "iambic tetrameter." Don’t let the fancy name scare you away. It’s not complicated. Even Dr. Seuss uses it, as in these lines from Green Eggs and Ham: I would not like them here or there. I would not like them anywhere. I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them Sam I Am. You can think of an "iamb" as a unit of poetry consisting of two syllables. This unit is also called a "foot." In iambic tetrameter each line has four (tetra) such feet, or eight syllables in total. Pick a line from your poem to test it. If you read the poem aloud, or listen to it in your head (in a normal speaking voice, of course) you will see that in each foot, or iamb, or pair of syllables, one syllable is stressed, while the other is not. Notice also that the poem has forty-six lines, or twenty-three pairs of lines. We call these pairs "couplets," and, in the case of "To His Coy Mistress," the two lines that make up each couplet rhyme with each other. Speaker Our speaker is anonymous. He could be any man, anywhere. The man does not reveal any physical or biographical details about himself, and he speaks to a woman, who also remains nameless. He’s an intense guy. He speaks very beautifully, rhyming everything so that we are barely aware of it and using the perfect word every time. Structure "To His Coy Mistress" is divided into three stanzas or poetic paragraphs.

Metaphysical Poetry Andrew Marvell's famous lyric To His Coy Mistress is a metaphysical poem. Metaphysical poems are brief, intense meditations employing wit, irony and elaborate "conceits" or comparisons. Underlying the formal structures of rhyme, meter, and stanza is the poem's logic-based argument. In To His Coy Mistress the explicit argument (the speaker's request that the coy lady yield to his passion) is a whimsical statement bristling with humorous hyperbole but leading to a deadly serious argument about the shortness of life and the quick passage of sexual pleasure. The adjective "coy" at the time of writing had none of its modern suggestions of playful teasing or coquetry. In Marvell's day the word was a synonym for reluctant, modest, even disdainful. Theme The theme expressed in it is carpe diem or seize the day. Marvell's poem is usually excluded from secondary level textbooks because of its explicit sexuality, despite its author being a Puritan and the son of a Calvinist Anglican preacher. "The lady addressed in the poem remains silent - reluctant to accede to the speaker's pleas because she wishes to maintain her "quaint Honour" or virginity. Stanza One During the first stanza, the speaker tells the mistress that if they had more time and space, her "coyness" wouldn’t be a "crime." He extends this discussion by describing how much he would compliment her and admire her, if only there was time. He would focus on "each part" of her body until he got to the heart (and "heart," here, is both a metaphor for sex, and a metaphor for love). Symbolism in Stanza One Related to The Imperial In the 1650s, the British Empire has its teeth firmly sunk into the land of India. Andrew Marvell was active politician, and the poem briefly alludes to British imperialism in the first stanza. Line 5: The "Indian Ganges" and "rubies," when taken together in this context, can be symbols of imperialism, especially to us, today. When we consider that he generally insults the mistress in this section, the colonialists, by way of rubies and India, become a metaphor for the mistress. She steals rubies from the Indian people. She steals sex from the speaker, by not having it with him. If she doesn’t stop abusing her power, she will leave him in ruins.

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Line 12: Yep, it’s the word "empire" that interests us here. Building an empire is not easy, and it takes time (though not as long as growing vegetables, apparently). Some would say the same of relationships. Thus, colonialism also becomes a metaphor for relationships. The speaker accuses the mistress of thinking that sex and relationships are something big and serious, like ruling the world (the goal of building an empire), when, in fact – or so he says later on – such things are as common for people as for birds. He accuses her of hyperbole, which is ironic, considering all of his hyperbole throughout the poem.

Stanza Two In the second stanza he says, "BUT," we don’t have the time, we are about to die! He tells her that life is short, but death is forever. In a shocking moment, he warns her that, when she’s in the coffin, worms will try to take her "virginity" if she doesn’t have sex with him before they die. If she refuses to have sex with him, there will be repercussions for him, too. All his sexual desire will burn up, "ashes" for all time. Stanza Three In the third stanza he says, "NOW," I’ve told you what will happen when you die, so let’s have sex while we’re still young. Hey, look at those "birds of prey" mating. That’s how we should do it – but, before that, let’s have us a little wine and time Then, he wants to play a game – the turn ourselves into a "ball" game. (Hmmm.) He suggests, furthermore, that they release all their pent up frustrations into the sex act, and, in this way, be free. Couplet: In the final couplet, he calms down a little. He says that having sex can’t make the "sun" stop moving. In Marvell’s time, the movement of the sun around the earth (we now believe the earth rotates around the sun) is thought to create time. Anyway, he says, we can’t make time stop, but we can change places with it. Whenever we have sex, we pursue time, instead of time pursuing us. This fellow has some confusing ideas about sex and time. Come to think of it, we probably do, too. "To His Coy Mistress" offers us a chance to explore some of those confusing thoughts.