Sam Rothenbaum
April 3, 2013
AP Literature
Lagomarisino
“To His Coy Mistress” Essay
The poem “To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvel is an excellent example of persuasive literature; in this case he is using fear instead of reason as motivation for the audience to comply. Marvel is also using diction relating to motions to enhance his tone and constantly revive his main point. This is evident throughout his poem as the parts that seem to be slow or still tend to be the more negative and the moments that he portrays as exciting seem to be where all of the actions are, this is another indication that the speaker of this poem is more fond of acting rather than thinking things through or waiting for something to be done. This is what brings out the theme of ‘carpe diem’ in the poem.
The speaker begins the poem by stating “Had we but world enough, and time.” By beginning this stanza saying that there ‘would’ be enough time for something indicates that there is not, therefore the whole entity of this stanza did not happen in the speaker’s world. Throughout the first stanza the speaker describes what he and his love, the subject which the poem is directed at, would do together if they had the time, he begins by saying that they would “sit and think about which way to walk”. This tells us that his time is not spent on sitting or thinking which again adds to the point of stillness relating to negativity. He continues to list the possible actions if time was not of the essence, this consists of collecting rubies by the sea, praising her eyes and body, and as the stanza continues he uses a biblical allusion to portray his never ending love for the subject. He declares that he would love her “ten years before the Flood” until the Jews convert; this Biblical allusion creates a new intangible motion through time in which it will take an eternity for him to finish praising her. Later in the stanza the speaker states that “at the last age…show your heart” implying that...