Discussion Topic
Structure and Argument in "To His Coy Mistress"
Summary:
"To His Coy Mistress" by Andrew Marvell is structured as a three-part argument to persuade a woman to embrace love before time runs out. The speaker first uses hyperbole to express his endless admiration for her if eternity allowed. He then emphasizes the fleeting nature of time, warning of death's inevitability. Finally, he urges immediate action, suggesting their passionate union would defy time's constraints. This metaphysical, carpe diem poem uses humor, fear, and vivid imagery to convey its theme.
How is "To His Coy Mistress" structured as a three-part argument?
To answer this question you need to think about the structure of the poem that Marvell creates and consider how the poem is actually divided into three discrete sections, and how each of those sections are used to advance the speaker's argument.
The first section runs from lines 1-20, and consists of lots of examples of hyperbole as the speaker tries to describe the extreme lengths to which he would go to express his love for his beloved if he had but time to do so:
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow...
However, in lines 21-32, the brevity of life is stressed as the speaker reminds his beloved that they do not have eternity to court. In reality, time is described as a "winged chariot hurrying near." The only future they have to look forward to are "deserts of vast eternity." Based on this, lines...
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33-46 move to the conclusion of the poem, as, with a tone of challenge and defiance, the speaker urges his mistress to "devour" time and "tear" the pleasures from life, because time cannot be made to stop. By so doing, the speaker argues, they can make the sun "run":
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life;
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
Thus each of the three sections of this poem is clearly built on upon the other and helps to advance the central argument of why it is important to love today and not wait for a tomorrow that may never come. "Coyness" is thus a "crime" based on the brevity of time and our inescapable death.
What is the structure of the poem "To His Coy Mistress"?
"To His Coy Mistress" was written by the English poet Andrew Marvell and was originally published in 1681, three years after Marvell's death. It is often presented as a three-stanza poem; however, Marvell originally wrote one single stanza, which is separated into three parts or poetic paragraphs that consist of forty-six lines. The second part starts with line 21, and the third part starts with line 33. Each line has four iambic feet, or iambs; thus the poem is a non-stanzaic iambic tetrameter poem. It also rhymes in couplets and follows an AABB rhyme scheme.
Due to its interesting structure, the poem is often considered a dramatic monologue and a three-part argument, as the speaker presents three arguments to convince his beloved to sleep with him.
Because of the way the speaker tries to persuade his "coy," or shy, mistress to give up her virginity and enjoy the pleasures of life while she still has her youth and beauty, "To His Coy Mistress" is commonly regarded as a "carpe diem," or "seize the day," poem. The main themes in this type of poetry are love, lust, satisfaction, the passing of time, and the imminence of death. Due to the use of conceits, allusions, and metaphors, "To His Coy Mistress" is also classified as a metaphysical poem.
References
What are the three divisions of the argument in "To His Coy Mistress"?
In Marvell's poem "To His Coy Mistress," the poet uses the carpe diem theme, live for today, for life is fleeting, to attempt to convince his coy mistress to engage in a sexual relationship.
The first stanza is used to tell the mistress of his adoration and her beauty combined with the element of time:
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze . . . (13-14)
He compliments different parts of her figure, telling her how many years he would take to adore it. However, at the onset of stanza one, he also tells her that they don't really have enough time for him to worship her as he would like (1-20). Therefore, they don't have enough time for her coyness or shyness.
In the second argument in the second stanza, the tone becomes more dire as the poet uses imagery of death and the grave to try to convince her:
. . . then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity . . . (27-28)
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace (31-32)
Here, he stresses how quickly time passes and warns the coy mistress that she could go to her grave a virgin. As well, he warns her that his lust could turn "into ashes." The emphasis in this portion of the argument is literally that their time to become lovers is running out.
The last argument tells the mistress that youth doesn't last forever, and if she becomes his lover, they will have an amazing sexual experience. The poet uses the imagery of "amorous birds of prey" to illustrate the degree of passion that will take place with their coupling. In fact, they will "devour" their time together.
If you wanted to summarize the poem in terms of three arguments, simply put they might be as follows:
- If we had eternity, there would be nothing wrong with your being coy and not wanting to make love with me.
- But we don't have eternity, and one cannot make love in the tomb.
- If we make love now as I want, it will be earth shattering--we will give the sun a run for its money, as they say.
The three "arguments" are organized into stanzas, so they're easy to investigate.
Of course, the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts. Reducing this hyperbolic, intelligent, "metaphysical" poem to an essay-like argument does not do it justice.
What is the argument presented in "To His Coy Mistress"?
In "To His Coy Mistress," the impatient speaker is trying to persuade his beloved to make love to him. He wants her to make up her mind in a timely fashion.
Therefore, the speaker says that while he adores his beloved and would gladly spend 30,000 years praising all her body parts, such as one hundred years on her eyes and two hundred on each breast, they don't have time for that. They are not going to live forever. Time's "winged chariot" is bearing down on them as he speaks, ready to flatten them at any moment.
He notes that once she is a dead, she will be in a crypt, accompanied by worms. At that point, she will not be able to enjoy any sensual pleasures. She needs to indulge in what life has to offer now, before it is too late.
Finally, the speaker paints a picture of what they should do to defeat time, which is portrayed as their enemy. They should grab hold of the present moment greedily and get all the pleasure possible from it:
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
This expresses the "carpe diem" or "seize the day" theme that was popular in the seventeenth century. The speaker is arguing that if his beloved doesn't enjoy what she can now, she may lose the possibility to do so.
Can you identify the logical and thematic structure in the poem "To His Coy Mistress"?
“To his Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell is split into three distinct parts. The argument the speaker is making in this poem is that the lady should drop her coyness (feigned modesty or shyness) and embrace him in love.
In lines 1–20, the speaker tells the lady that if their time together were eternal, he would spend it praising her, “An age at least to every part.” This is a declaration of love; while the lady may be coy, the speaker is making his intentions known. He also references the past, “Ten years before the flood” and “The conversion of the Jews,” establishing the theme of time.
In lines 21–23, the speaker brings his argument to the present moment, using the image of “Time’s winged chariot hurrying near” to continue his thematic progression. His logical progression continues as well—after admitting his love, he is now reminding the lady that they do not have all the time in the world; her “quaint honour [will] turn to dust” and “into ashes all my lust.” He is making the point that time is of the essence.
In lines 33–46, the speaker finishes his logical argument: he has established that he loves her and that they do not have all the time they might like, so she should drop her coyness and, “while thy willing soul transpires,” embrace physical love with him:
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life.
His thematic progression reaches its endpoint as well, in the last two lines of the poem:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
The speaker is now talking about the future, the happy days they will spend together, saying that time will have to speed up to catch up with their love.
What type of poem is "To His Coy Mistress"?
There are several ways to classify Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress.” First, it is a metaphysical poem. Literary scholars regularly link Marvell to a group of seventeenth-century poets known as the metaphysical poets, whose themes tended to revolve around religion, love, and morality. In “To His Coy Mistress”, love and morality are key concerns. The speaker encourages his beloved to not be coy and to embrace their love because, after all, their time on earth is temporary.
“To His Coy Mistress” is also a lyric poem. Lyric poems are generally short poems that convey intimate emotions. Marvell’s poem is a good example of a lyric poem, given its relative brevity and its expression of passionate personal feelings.
From a thematic perspective, "To His Coy Mistress" is a carpe diem poem. Carpe diem poems follow some version of the argument that because life is short and time is fleeting, one ought to take advantage of the pleasures and joys of life before it is too late. In the case of Marvell's poem, the speaker uses this carpe diem conceit in the context of an amorous appeal to his beloved, whose coyness is antithetical to his own sense of urgency.
Finally, to classify the poem from a formal perspective, "To His Coy Mistress" is a forty-six line poem composed in iambic tetrameter, with a couplet rhyme scheme. This means that each line is composed of four iambs, an iamb being a metrical foot consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. Each successive pair of lines form a rhyme, as seen in the opening two lines:
Had we but world enough and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
The poem is divided into three sections of uneven length, demarcated by indentations. These sections can be thought of as stanzas, but they are not separated by the break that typically divides stanzas. Overall, these formal features give the poem a musical, humorous, discursive tone.
References
How many parts does the argument of "To His Coy Mistress" have when paraphrased?
This poem can be outlined in three major sections.
The first section of the poem begins with the first line and ends with "For, lady, you deserve this state, nor would I love at lower rate." This first section of the poem presents the problem that the young man is having, in that he is interested in a young lady who is "coy" with him (in other words, she is not willing to give him that which he wants). The first section of this poem uses satire to exaggerate the fact that if the man had all the time in the world, he would spend thousands of years trying to win her heart.
The second section of the poem begins with "But at my back I always hear, time's winged chariot hurrying near" and ends with "The grave's a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace." This second section to the narrator's argument emphasizes the reality of the fact that they do have to live under the pressure or burden of time, and that the clock is ticking. If they wait too long, they shall go their graves having not enjoyed the intimacy that can be found with each other.
The third section is the rest of the poem. Here the author makes one
final argument that, now while they are still young, let them stop wasting time
and live the rest of their days passionately. He concludes by stating
that although he cannot stop the hands of time, the sun should have to chase
them in their passionate pursuit of each other.