John Milton's On His Blindness 1673

John Milton‟s “On His Blindness” (1673)

When I Consider How My Light is Spent (On His Blindness) Summary

The first seven and a half lines of this poem are one big, long, confusing sentence. Here's our summary: "When I think of how I have lost my vision even before middle age, and how I am unable to use my best talent to serve God, I want to ask if God requires his servants to work for him even if they don't have vision."

But before he can speak up, a figure called Patience answers his question. Patience is like, "You think God needs your work? No, man. His best servants are the ones who bear life's burden the best. He already has thousands of people running around across land and sea to serve him. You can just stand right there and wait on him, and that's enough."

Lines 1-2

When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,

• The speaker thinks about how all of his light has been used up ("spent") before even half his life is over. As a man without light, he now lives in a world that is both "dark and wide."
• The first word of the poem, "When," gives us an idea of the structure of the sentence that will follow. The structure is, "When this happens, that happens." As in, "When I broke the glass, I had to find a broom to sweep it up."
• But be careful – the second part of the sentence doesn't come until lines 7 and 8. Milton's audience was more used to reading dense and complicated sentences, so you'll want to take the first seven lines slowly. (That's OK, we also think Milton's audience would have had a doozy of a time figuring out text messaging.)
• Most readers believe that the poem is clearly about Milton's blindness, but the poem never directly refers to blindness or even vision. Instead, we think that "light" is a metaphor for vision.
• The metaphor is complicated. The speaker says that his light can be "spent," and this word suggests that he is thinking of something like an oil lamp. The light is "spent" when the oil in the lamp runs out. To make a contemporary comparison, it would be like someone comparing his vision to a flashlight that runs out of batteries before it is supposed to. Milton is suggesting that he got a bad deal.
• The word "spent" also makes us think of money. Milton is reflecting on how he has used or "spent" his vision, now that it is gone. Has he used it wisely, or did he fritter it away because he thought it would never run out?
• The word "ere" means "before." How does Milton know that he became blind before his life was halfway over? For this to be true, wouldn't he have to be some kind of psychic who knew when he was going to die? The usual explanation of this line is that Milton guesses roughly how long he will live. Milton went completely blind at the age of 42.
• Finally, calling the world "dark and wide" makes it sound like a scary place, doesn't it? Interestingly, Milton makes it seem as if the world has run out of light, rather than growing dark because of any blindness on his part.

Lines 3-4

And that one Talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, […]

• These lines are the trickiest in the entire poem, because they appear to be simpler then they are.
• The key word is "talent." You probably read "talent" and think of skills like throwing a perfect spiral or being a piano prodigy. But there's a double meaning intended for people who know history or Biblical scripture. In the ancient world, a "talent" was also a standard of weight used to measure money, just as a "pound" is a measure of both weight and currency.
• You can read Matthew 25 (it's short), but here's our brief summary of "The Parable of Talents." A lord gives three of his servants some money ("talents") to hold on to when he leaves for a trip. Two of the servants use the money to gain more money for their master. (In contemporary language, we'd call this 'investment.') But the third servant just buries the money, the ancient equivalent of hiding it under your mattress. When the lord returns, he's happy with the first two servants and gives them more responsibilities, but furious with the third servant. He exiles the third servant into the "darkness," which is the equivalent of "death."
• When Milton says that talent is "death to hide," he is referring to the money in the Biblical story and also to his own "talent," in the sense of a skill or trade.
• There is no way to tell what specific talent he means, but our guess would be his intelligence and his writing and reading skills, which he had used in service of Oliver Cromwell's government. This "talent" is "lodged" or buried within the speaker just like the money in the story. It cannot be used to make greater profit.

Lines 4-6

[…] though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide;

• The speaker has just told us that his talent is as useless as money buried in the desert, but now he says that his uselessness has nothing to do with a lack of will. To the contrary, his soul desires (is "bent") to use his skills in the service of his "Maker," God.
• When he is faced with God, he wants to have a record of accomplishment to show Him.
• God is being compared with the lord from the "Parable of the Talents" in Matthew 25. When God "returns" to him like the master in the parable, the speaker wants to show that he has used his talents profitably.
• The word "account" here means both" story" and "a record of activities with money."
• If the speaker turns out to have wasted his profits, he worries that God will scold or "chide" him. And if God is anything like the lord from the parable, the speaker could get cast into a darkness even more fearful than the one created by his blindness.

Lines 7-8

"Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"
I fondly ask. […]

• It has taken the speaker six lines to get through the part of the sentence that begins "When." Now he goes on to say what happens "when" he thinks about all the stuff he has described above. Namely, he wonders if God demands that people undertake hard, physical work, or "day-labour," when they don't have any light.
• The speaker doesn't have any light because he's blind, but in Milton's metaphor he compares this condition to having to do work at night that you would normally do during the day – like, say, building a house or plowing a field.
• The word "exact" means something like "charge," "claim," or "demand." You can "exact" a toll or a fee, for example. So the speaker wants to know if God demands work as a kind of payment that is due to Him.
• The first section of the poem is completed by the words "I fondly ask." The word "fondly" means "foolishly," not "lovingly." The speaker accuses himself of being a idiot for even thinking this question.
• Fortunately, "patience" steps in to prevent his foolishness. More on that in the next section.

Lines 8-10

[…] But patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts; who best

• "Patience" to the rescue! Patience is personified as someone who can talk sense into the speaker. Patience is often personified in Christian art because of its role in helping one to achieve important virtues like courage and wisdom.
• The speaker is about to "murmur" his foolish question about whether God would be so cruel as to make impossible demands of work, but then his patience steps in to stop him. The rest of the poem is the reply made by patience.
• First, patience points out that God does not need anything. God is complete and perfect. He doesn't need work or talents ("gifts") of any kind.

Line 11

Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. […]

• Patience now scores its second point in the rebuttal to the speaker. Patience argues that those people are the best servants of God who allow their fates to be linked with and controlled by God, as if they were wearing a yoke.
• Essentially, this means accepting things as they come, especially suffering and misfortune.
• A "yoke" is a wood frame that is placed around the necks of farm animals, like oxen, so that they can be directed.
• Patience doesn't want to make God sound like a slave driver, so God's yoke is called "mild," or not-that-bad. It's not how much you have to show for your time on earth that counts, it's how you handle your submission to God.

Lines 11-14

[…] His state
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait."

• The final point made by patience is that God is like a king, not a lord, so the "Parable of the Talents" does not strictly apply.
• Lords need everyone on their estates to work for them; they usually don't have the resources to spend on keeping servants just to stand around and wait on them. Kings, on the other hand, have unlimited resources, especially if they control a "state" as large as the entire earth.
• With His kingly status, God has plenty of minions to do His "bidding" by rushing from place to place – that is, doing things that require light and vision. It doesn't make a difference whether one more person fulfills the role or not.
• But kings also have people who "wait" on them, who stand in a state of readiness until their action is needed.
• To summarize, we believe that the sentence, "His state is kingly," is meant to contrast with the "lordly" state of the master of the Biblical parable in Matthew 25.
• This being Milton, of course, "wait" can also have the meaning of waiting for something to happen, as in, "I waited for the bus."
• What would the speaker be waiting for? The Second Coming of Jesus? The end of history? We don't know because the poem only suggests this meaning oh-so-vaguely.
• The word "post" here just means "to travel quickly." That's why the mail is often referred to as the "post," because you're supposed to travel quickly to deliver it.
• The poem ends with a vindication of the speaker's passivity, which has been forced on him by his blindness.

Vision, Light, and Darkness

Symbol Analysis

This poem is sometimes called "On His Blindness," but the speaker might respond, "Blindness? What blindness? I'm not the one who's blind. It's the world that has run out of light." This argument is like saying that you aren't really running – it's the world that is rolling beneath you like a treadmill. As you can see, Milton uses complicated wordplay to describe why the speaker has a hard time serving God. His "blindness" is like a lamp that runs out of fuel, like the daylight that turns to night, and like a currency that hasn't been used to maximum effect.

• Line 1: Vision is not same thing as "light," although vision requires light. So, we can't just substitute one word for the other. Milton is using a metaphor to compare his vision to a light source that could run out, like an old-fashioned lamp that burns through its oil.
• Line 2: "Ere half my days" is a way of saying, "Before my life is through." But "days" also introduces the idea of daylight. The speaker's "days" are now more like nights. He uses another metaphor to compare his lack of vision to an imagined world that does not have light. The phrase "this dark world and wide" is also an example of alliteration.
• Line 7: The speaker compares God – again using metaphor – to a master who makes his servants work in darkness. He "denies" them light, which sounds heartless.

The Parable of the Talents

Symbol Analysis

The poem hinges on a pun on "talent" in the sense of "skill" and "talent" as a unit of monetary measurement in Biblical times. The parable of talents occurs in chapter 25 of the Gospel of Matthew, and it tells the story of two servants improving their own lot by increasing the bounty of their master. In the first section, the speaker compares God to the "lord" in the parable who goes away on a trip and returns to ask what his servants have done with their money. In the second section of the poem, "patience" explains that God is more like a king who does not need all his servants to actively work for him.

• Line 1: The word "spent" becomes a pun when we read it in light of the discussion of money and currency in the next few lines. The speaker's ability to see is like a currency, and he has unfortunately burned through it too soon. That "light" was supposed to last him all the way through his retirement!
• Lines 3-5: The word "Talent" has a double meaning, as described above. The whole Biblical parable about hiding the talent and not turning the master's currency into a profit is used as an extended metaphor in which God is compared to the lord, while the speaker is the third servant who has buried the money.
• Line 6: The word "account" is also a double-entendre that works on both sides of the extended metaphor. In one sense, "account" is a story of justification for how the speaker has used his time on earth. In another sense, the "account" is the amount of money the servant in the parable is able to show to his lord. The servant must give this account after his lord has "returned" from traveling.
• Lines 11-12: We think that the observation that God's "state is Kingly" is meant to contrast God with the lord from the parable.

Patience, Please

Symbol Analysis

"Patience" is an important virtue in Christianity. It allows people to work toward other "theological" virtues like hope and faith. When the speaker begins to question whether God might be kind of a cruel figure for demanding work from people who can't perform it, patience steps in to correct him. The twist, of course, is that the speaker must already have patience in order for the personified figure called "patience" to come on the scene.

• Line 7: The speaker is about to ask a rhetorical question about God's justice before patience interrupts him.
• Line 8: The virtue of patience is personified as "patience," the amazing advice giver. In the second half of the poem, patience replies to the speaker's question.
• Line 11: The metaphor in the first half of this line compares God's rule over men to the wooden yoke that guides farm animals.
• Lines 12-13: These lines present an image of servants rushing all over the world, by land and by sea, to serve God. These "servants" are Christian soldiers, merchants, politicians, clergy, etc. Lines 11-14 form an extended metaphor comparing service to God with service to the most powerful king in the world.
• Line 14: The word "wait" is a pun. It means "wait" in the sense that the speaker will wait until the end of his life to meet his ultimate fate, and also in the sense that a person "waits" on a more powerful person simply by standing there until he is needed.

When I Consider How My Light is Spent (On His Blindness): Rhyme, Form & Meter

We’ll show you the poem’s blueprints, and we’ll listen for the music behind the words.

Italian (Petrarchan) Sonnet in Iambic Pentameter

Milton loved the classics, and in the 17th century, "classic" meant anything associated with Ancient Greece or Rome. The heart of the Roman Empire was located in what is now modern-day Italy, and the sonnet was invented in Italy, so it was not a surprise that Milton would favor the original Italian form of the sonnet. This form is divided up into two sections, one with eight lines and one with six. Shakespeare, on the other hand, used a sonnet form that ended with a rhyming two-line couplet. The Italian sonnet form was made popular by the Italian poet Petrarch, who was to the literary Renaissance what The Temptations were to Motown.

The rhyme scheme of this sonnet is ABBAABBAC CDECDE. So, you can see that lines 1, 4, 5, and 8 all rhyme with each other. Unlike a classic Italian sonnet, "When I consider how my light is spent" does not divide cleanly into eight lines and six lines, however. The first section of the poem consists of the speaker trying to frame his foolish question, and the second consists of the response to the question by a figure named "patience." Most Italian sonnets have a sharp thematic turn or "volta" between the two sections, but in this poem the turn is a bit muddled between lines 8 and 9. If you think about it, the confusion makes perfect sense, as it conveys the awkwardness of someone (patience) interrupting someone else (the speaker) before the speaker can say something stupid.

The meter of the poem is classic iambic pentameter, with five iambs (an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable). Some of the lines do not fit the pattern exactly, but the pattern itself is clear:

"Doth God ex-act day-la-bor, light de-nied?"

Finally, this poem features a lot of enjambment, which is when one line runs over into the next without a pause. Just check out the end of each line, and you'll find that over half lack punctuation markers like periods or semi-colons.

Speaker Point of View

Who is the speaker, can she or he read minds, and, more importantly, can we trust her or him?

Though the speaker may be seething with frustration and even anger at God, he knows that he must tread very carefully if he wants to express himself. He has the skills and intelligence to do great things out in the world, but he has been tripped up by a seemingly trivial problem: his light has run out. Unfortunately, this unlucky event throws a big wrench in his plans to be useful. The speaker imagines that he could have become a famous politician or even, say, the author of one of the greatest epic poems in the English language. (Cough, cough). But now he can't possibly do any of that, right? (Cough, cough, cough.) He's a hard worker, and he can't just sit still! Can he?

You get the impression from reading the first section of the poem that the speaker just wants to shout, "You can't seriously expect me to do my Christian duty without vision. This is a joke, right?" Fortunately, the speaker has a little guy in his shirt pocket named "patience," capable of popping out and delivering a pep talk whenever it looks like the speaker is about to lose his cool. The important thing to remember is that "patience" belongs to the speaker.

Finally, we can see why the speaker thinks he would be so useful to God and to society: he is incredibly smart. With his ability to pack complicated arguments into a few brief lines, he would make an amazing lawyer. Also, he probably knows the Gospels inside and out because the "Parable of the Talents" is one of the least frequently quoted stories from the New Testament. On the other hand, the speaker still has "half [his] days" left to live, so maybe, just maybe, he'll still get around to doing great things.

When I Consider How My Light is Spent (On His Blindness) Setting

Where It All Goes Down

The poem reminds us of those scenes from horror movies where the hero is walking through some dark and dangerous place – chased by monsters or something – and his flashlight/torch/lamp suddenly flickers and goes out. You hear heavy breathing and…what's that?! Did you hear a branch break?!

OK, the speaker is not in mortal danger, but he feels like his soul is endangered. He is left to navigate a "dark" and "wide" world without his vision. What's more, his demanding "Maker" has gone on a trip, and he worries he will be cast into further darkness if he can't make use of his "Talent." That "Talent" is buried deep within him, like a gold coin that has been thrown in a hole and covered up with soil.

In the second half of the poem, "patience" presents a different view of the world. In this view, the world is a huge kingdom with thousands and thousands of servants working to achieve God's will. Some of them speed from continent to continent like the characters in an Indiana Jones movie. Others just stand around until the king calls for them.

Sound Check

Read this poem aloud. What do you hear?

If you ever wanted to know what walking on eggshells sounded like in a poem, this sonnet is a prime example. The speaker buries the climax of the first part of the poem – the question of whether God demands "day-labour, light denied" – inside all these other delicate expressions of why light is so important to him. The poem has a lot of short phrases separated by commas and which seemingly bring us further and further from the point, as if Milton is worried that the whole sonnet might crack open into a steaming mass of resentment. It's like if you had a classmate who said, "When I think about how my pencil just broke, I can't finish my math problem, and I like math so much, but you really need an eraser to do it, or else you might be stuck with a wrong answer, which would lead to a bad grade; 'Can I borrow a pencil?' I would want to ask you." Just ask for the darned pencil already!

However, when we consider that the speaker is about to talk to God, we can understand his desire to be cautious. The decision to questioning God's judgment is not to be taken lightly. The speaker is so cautious that he says, "I fondly ask" after he asks the question, which serves to take the sting of arrogance and insubordination out of it. Put another way, the time it takes you as reader to figure out what the speaker is trying to get across lessens the direct force of his statements.

"Patience," by contrast, is more direct. It uses shorter, more declarative sentences like, "His state is kingly." Because they are making complex arguments, both the speaker and "patience" use frequent enjambment, where one lines carries over into the next without a pause. This gives the poem a prose-like and slightly evasive sound (the eggshell thing, again). The entire poem builds to the final line, which does not carry over from the previous line and sounds remarkably clear and straightforward: "They also serve who only stand and wait." And we breathe a sigh of relief that the speaker has managed to hold things together until the end.

What’s Up With the Title?

This sonnet first appeared in Milton's 1673 collection of Poems simply as the nineteenth sonnet in the collection, or Sonnet XIX. Many readers, including us, refer to it by the first line, "When I consider how my light is spent." Identifying a poem by the first line is standard practice in the poetry world.

But, many more readers refer to the poem as, "On His Blindness." The problem with this title is that it didn't come from Milton. It was given almost a hundred years later by Bishop Newton, a writer and clergyman (source). Now, almost everyone agrees that the poem is most likely about Milton's blindness, but Milton never says so up front, leaving the door open for some interesting ambiguity. If Milton had wanted to say, "Hey, guys, this poem is about my blindness!" he could easily have done so. Newton's invented title changes the way you read the poem, which is why we prefer to use the first line of the poem.

John Milton’s Calling Card

What is the poet’s signature style?

"Light" in Darkness

Some critics think that Milton's blindness gave him an uncanny ability to depict light, darkness, and shadow. This sonnet offers pretty strong evidence for that claim. The central extended metaphor combines the concepts of light and money into symbolism as dense as seven-layer cake. Light and darkness interact in strange ways in Milton's poems. One of the most famous sections in Paradise Lost describes the interior of Hell as having:

No light; but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,

"Darkness visible." Wow. Milton's blindness proved to him that one can "see" even without light. We should also point out that the distinction between light and darkness is central to Christian theology.

Tough-O-Meter

We’ve got your back. With the Tough-O-Meter, you’ll know whether to bring extra layers or Swiss army knives as you summit the literary mountain. (10 = Toughest)

(7) Snow Line

For a short, 14-line sonnet, this poem is pretty hard. That's Milton for you. Few poets display so much religious and literary knowledge as Mr. Milton, and this poem is no exception. Most people today don't memorize the Gospels like they did back in 17th-century England, but if you don't know the "Parable of the Talents" from Matthew 25, you miss a lot of the context for the poem's symbolism. It would be like reading a poem about "The Rumble in the Jungle" if you had never heard of the legendary boxers Mohammed Ali and George Foreman. Also, there are a lot of double-entendres in this sonnet, and some words like "fondly" have unexpected meanings. In short, this is a poem where Shmoop makes an excellent Sherpa to take you to the top of the mountain. The view is unquestionably worth it.

When I Consider How My Light is Spent (On His Blindness) Theme of Guilt and Blame

The speaker's mind is a big ball of guilt and confusion. He takes pride in his vast intelligence, but worries that he failed to use his "light" when he had it. You can imagine him saying, "How could I have known my vision was going to run out?!" His soul "bends" toward service of God like a flower bends toward the sun, but he is no longer fit for the kinds of intensive work that he might have done. He hopes that God does not blame him like the angry lord from the "Parable of the Talents" in the Bible.

When I Consider How My Light is Spent (On His Blindness) Theme of Dreams, Hopes, and Plans

Before going blind, the speaker has high hopes for what he might accomplish in the future. He says he would have been a supremely useful servant of God. But we can't know if his motives are truly selfless, or if he is an ambitious guy who now struggles to come to terms with a personal upheaval. As he looks to the future, he compares his situation to the third servant from the New Testament "Parable of the Talents" in Matthew 25. Because he has not increased his master's wealth, this servant is cast into the darkness. Considering that the speaker already feels he lives in the darkness, what further punishment does he expect? At the end of the poem, patience gives him a new plan: he should wait until God calls on him to serve

When I Consider How My Light is Spent (On His Blindness) Theme of Principles

We've all heard the homespun wisdom "Patience is a virtue," which sounds almost mystical but is really like saying, "Blue is a color." The more interesting question is, what's a virtue? A virtue is a character trait that helps you achieve some desired good or outcome. Virtues are central to Christian theology. The speaker desires to serve God, but his impatience and sense of wounded pride threaten to get in his way by leading him to rashly criticize his "Maker." The virtue of patience helps him to remember that it's not all about him. Just because he thinks he has something to offer doesn't mean that God needs him to act right away.

When I Consider How My Light is Spent (On His Blindness) Theme of Religion

John Milton was a Puritan who supported Oliver Cromwell's republican commonwealth after the execution of King Charles I of England. During this period, politics and religion were tied closely together, so that being "useful" to the government meant being "useful" to God, at least for Milton. The poem displays Milton's encyclopedic knowledge of the Bible but also his reforming instincts. Milton is not afraid to challenge the supposed moral of the New Testament "Parable of the Talents" by pointing out the difference between God and the lord from the story. The sonnet gives expression to intense religious emotions, but its rational and rhetorical qualities are equally important.

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Andre Marvell‟s “To His Coy Mistress summary and analysis theme

Andre Marvell‟s “To His Coy Mistress”

To His Coy Mistress Summary

"To His Coy Mistress" is divided into three stanzas or poetic paragraphs. It’s spoken by a nameless man, who doesn’t reveal any physical or biographical details about himself, to a nameless woman, who is also biography-less.

During the first stanza, the speaker tells the mistress that if they had more time and space, her "coyness" (see our discussion on the word "coy" in "What’s Up With the Title?") 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).

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.

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 (cheese is for sissies). 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.

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.

Lines 1-2

Had we but world enough, and time,

This coyness, Lady, were no crime

• The speaker starts off by telling the mistress that if there was enough time and enough space ("world enough, and time"), then her "coyness" (see "What’s up with the title" for some definitions) wouldn’t be a criminal act.
• This is a roundabout way of calling her a criminal, and makes us think of jails, courtrooms, and punishments.
• Hmmm. What exactly is her crime? What is she being "coy" about?

Lines 3-4

We would sit down and think which way

To walk and pass our long love's day.

• In any case, he continues…. If they had all the time and space they wanted, they could Google everything, read guide books, and carefully consider where they might go next, while aimlessly strolling and resting whenever they pleased.

Line 5

Thou by the Indian Ganges' side

• She could hang out on the bank of the "Indian Ganges" finding "rubies."
• The Ganges River is considered sacred and holy by many people all over the world. In Marvell’s time, the Ganges is pure and pristine. Now, many parts of it are incredibly polluted.

Lines 5-6

Thou by the Indian Ganges' side

Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide

• And, he would be across the world at the Humber tidal estuary, skipping in the froth from the waves and whining. (Actually, he says "complain," which also means "love song.")
• This would place them far away from each other, obviously.
• The speaker doesn’t sound thrilled at the idea of a long-distance relationship.

Lines 7-10

Of Humber would complain. I would

Love you ten years before the Flood,

And you should, if you please, refuse

Till the conversion of the Jews.

• He would go back in time to Noah and the Flood, and forward in time to the "conversion of the Jews," all the while loving her.
• The speaker’s grand, Biblical language mocks poems which describe love in divine terms.

Lines 11-12

My vegetable love should grow

Vaster than empires, and more slow;

• Then, we get one of the poem’s most famous lines. The speaker starts telling the mistress about his "vegetable love."
• Much debate occurs over the meaning of this term.
• The word "slow" in line 12 gives us a clue. We think "vegetable love" is "organic love" – love without the pressure of anything but nature, a natural process resulting in something nourishing – vegetables.
• But, be careful. Since it’s organic, vegetable love will cost a little more in the grocery store.
• We can’t neglect another connotation, either.
• A certain part of the male anatomy is shaped like certain members of the vegetable kingdom. Vegetable love also refers to that.
• Some literary critics think the "vegetable" in "vegetable love" refers to the female anatomy, as well.
• We’ll let you do the math on your own.

Lines 13-17

An hundred years should go to praise

Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze;

Two hundred to adore each breast, 

But thirty thousand to the rest;

An age at least to every part,

• Anyhow, he says that, if he had time, he would give her compliments about each of her individual body parts, and he would spend a bazillion years doing it.

Line 18

And the last age should show your heart.

• And then, finally, after all that complimenting, she would "show [her] heart," presumably by having sex with him.

Line 19-20

For, Lady, you deserve this state,

Nor would I love at lower rate.

• You’re worth it, too, he says, and I wouldn’t give you anything less than that first-class love.
• The word "rate" cleverly links with the word "heart" of the previous line, making us think of "heart rate."

Lines 21-22

But at my back I always hear

Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near;

• And, then, he gives her a huge gigantic "BUT." Ouch. You see, the speaker hears something behind him: "Time’s winged chariot," to be exact.
• He’s being chased down by Time’s hybrid car!
• He doesn’t say who’s driving, but we can assume it’s probably Time.

Lines 23-24

And yonder all before us lie

Deserts of vast eternity.

• Then, he seems to have a hallucination.
• Look, he tells the mistress, look at all this sand. The future is just endless sand.
• We’re all going to die.

Line 25

Thy beauty shall no more be found,

• And you won’t look so pretty there, missy.

Lines 26

Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound

• You sure won’t be able to hear my pretty song when you are in a "grave."

Lines 27-28

My echoing song: then worms shall try

That long preserved virginity,

• This next part is even creepier.
• The speaker tells the mistress that, in the grave, worms will have sex with her.
• According to the line, she’s a virgin.

Line 29

And your quaint honour turn to dust,

• In the grave, her "quaint honor" will completely disintegrate.
• According to The Norton Anthology of English Literature, "quaint" is a euphemism that means "vagina."
• So, he’s telling her that she can’t take her virginity with her into the afterlife, and making icky jokes about her vagina.

Line 30

And into ashes all my lust:

• Next, he tells her that if they die without having sex together, his "lust" or desire, will all burn up, with nothing left but the "ashes."
• Interestingly, he seems to imply that, if he can’t have sex with her, he won’t have sex at all.

Lines 31-32

The grave 's a fine and private place,

But none, I think, do there embrace.

• He rubs in the whole thing by telling her that coffins are great: they have lots of privacy, but no hugging!

Line 33

Now therefore, while the youthful hue

• Luckily, he leaves all that morbidity behind, and gives us the old "now, therefore." By this, the speaker suggests that his argument is successful, and that he’s about to tell the mistress what she should do, since his argument is so successful.

Lines 34-36

Sits on thy skin like morning dew,

And while thy willing soul transpires

At every pore with instant fires,

• He kind of brings her back from the grave here. Just a minute ago, he imagines her dead in the crypt, and, now, he tells her how young she is, and how her soul rushes around excitedly inside her, leaking out through her pores.
• "Transpire" has a few fun meanings that you can ponder.
• The first is "to come to light."
• The second is "to happen."
• The third actually has to do with plants. If a plant "transpires," it loses water vapor through its stomata (little pores on a plant's leaves), a crucial part of photosynthesis.

Line 37

Now let us sport us while we may,

• Since you are transpiring (rhymes with "perspiring") and all, let’s play some games, he tells her.
• Then, he gets a brilliant idea.

Line 38

And now, like amorous birds of prey,

• They should pretend to be birds of prey, mating!
• (Sounds a little dangerous to us.)
• Also, the word "prey" introduces violence, and therefore uneasiness, into the scene.

Line 39

Rather at once our time devour

• But, before the games begin, we should have a little pre-mating dinner.
• Here, honey, try this seared fillet-o-time, on a bed of vegetable love.
• And for dessert – time capsules!
• See, time deserves to be eaten.

Line 40

Than languish in his slow-chapt power.

• Time exerts its "slow-chapped power" over the speaker for far too long.
• According to the Norton Anthology of English Literature, "slow-chapped power" means "slowly devouring jaws."
• In short, he feels like he’s dying in Time’s mouth, and that time is slowly eating him up.
• He wants to turn the tables, and thinks that sex, or so he tells his mistress, is the way to get time under his control.

Lines 41-42

Let us roll all our strength and all

Our sweetness up into one ball,

• Next comes his actual description of sex. The rolling up in a ball doesn’t sound so bad. "Strength" carries on the idea of sex as sport from line 37. Come to think of it, "ball" works that way, too.

Lines 43-44

And tear our pleasures with rough strife

Thorough the iron gates of life:

• But, what’s with "tear" and "strife"?
• It makes sense from the speaker’s perspective.
• He claims to believe that sex is the way to another world, a way to break out of the prison of time.
• This also suggests that he thinks that bringing the "strife" of life into the bedroom will enhance the sexual experience.

Lines 45-46

Thus, though we cannot make our sun

Stand still, yet we will make him run.

• In this final couplet (a couplet is a stanza made up of two lines, usually rhyming), the speaker seems a little bit calmer.
• He talks about the sun now, instead of time.
• In his time, the sun is thought to control time.
• In the end, he admits that sex is a compromise.
• They can’t use it to stop time, but they can use it to make time go faster.
• What? If time goes faster, won’t the speaker and the mistress die sooner?
• Not if he’s in control.
• And, not if, as we suggest in "Symbols, Images and Wordplay" under "The Great Beyond," the sun and time, also represent death.
• If they can make time run, it won’t have time to kill people.
• Er, or something like that.
• It’s not necessarily the most rational argument, but it has its charm.
• And, the speaker isn’t the first person to think that sex is the answer to all problems.
• In any case, the final couplet can give you food for thought for years.

Motion and Stillness

Symbol Analysis

"To His Coy Mistress" is very concerned with the full range of motion, including stillness. The motion helps the poem pick up speed, and the stillness lets us catch our breath and reflect for moments before we rush on. This back and forth also helps the speaker make his point. His portrayal of stillness isn’t very positive, while his moments of action are full of excitement and challenge, suggesting that our speaker is all about action.

• Lines 3-4: The speaker is big on hyperbole, and he uses it to suggest various speeds of motion and even stillness. "Picking rubies" implies a somewhat leisurely action (although actual ruby-picking is not leisurely at all).
• Lines 8-10: The speaker’s declaration that (if he had time) he would love her "ten years before the flood" and "till the conversion of the Jews" combines hyperbole and allusion to create motion, in this case a sense of rapid movement through time. He also uses the grand, Biblical language ironically to poke fun at the mistress, whom he accuses of wanting something timeless (like eternal love), while saying in the same breath that he would give this to her, too, if he has time. This might create the motion of the mistress running away from the speaker.
• Lines 18-19: The speaker uses "show your heart" as a metaphor for the mistress’s imagined agreement to finally have sex with him, implying faster action, and possibly a faster heartbeat. But, to emphasize the theme of mock leisure in this stanza, he slows things down by using the word "show," which rhymes with the "slow" of a previous line.
• Line 20: He then extends the "heart" metaphor in line 20 by introducing the word rate – as in heart rate, another kind of motion. We can’t neglect the sense of "rate" which means "price" or "cost." With this pun, he slyly accuses her of wanting to sell her love for compliments – which brings us back to the running away thing.
• Lines 45-46: The final lines of the poem employ a variety of fun techniques. The simple imagery of the word "sun," which makes us see yellow or orange or red as we read, combines with personification to deepen the image. We see a red-orange blur, wearing fiery running shoes. As you might suspect, Marvell’s ending flourish is even more sophisticated. The sun is also a metaphor for time. Time is an abstract concept (while the sun is an object we can see). By giving an abstract concept (time) human characteristics (running), the speaker personifies an abstraction, and we are left with an image of a bizarre red-orange clock wearing tennis shoes, trying to stay as far away from the speaker as possible.

The Imperial

Symbol Analysis

In the 1650s, the British Empire has its teeth firmly sunk into the land of India. Andrew Marvell was active politician, and very close with Oliver Cromwell – don’t mention his name if you are ever in Ireland! Without a thorough study, we can’t say exactly what Marvell’s role in British colonialism and imperialism is, but he probably had some hand in it.

Luckily, we are here to explore the poem, and the poem doesn’t say much about this issue, although what it does say is characteristically ambiguous. Nevertheless, the brief mention takes on significance, as we gaze back in to the world’s past.

• Line 5: As noted, the poem briefly alludes to imperialism. 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.
• Line 12: Yep, it’s the word "empire" that interests us here. Building an empire ain’t 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. If Marvell has anxiety concerning imperialism (which is highly possible), he picks a pretty sly way to talk about it. Of course, this poem wasn’t published until after he was dead.

The Great Unknown

Symbol Analysis

As we discuss in "In A Nutshell," Andrew Marvell is considered a Metaphysical Poet, which means, in part, that he was concerned with the mysteries of life, death, and the universe. The striking images of the unknown as imagined by the speaker might not give us any answers, but they entertain us and give us food for thought as we ponder all these deep things.

• Lines 21-22: What kind of chariot does time drive? The chariot is a nice example of metonymy. The chariot becomes a stand in for time. When the speaker hears the chariot behind him (which is all the time), he associates it with time. The imagery of wings helps us see the chariot, and even hear the sound it makes. This metonymical link between time and the chariot also personifies the abstract concept of time, by implying that time is behind the wheel of the chariot. Either that, or time’s chauffer is behind the wheel – but, if time has a driver, that’s still personification.
• Lines 27-30. Hyperbole turns nasty in this section. He makes the ridiculous suggestion that, if she dies a virgin, worms will have sex with her dead body. Ew. This vision of the unknown employs simple, but effective visual imagery.
• Lines 36-38. It’s possible that sex is unknown to the speaker, and he implies that it’s unknown to the mistress. His vision of sex, like most of what he envisions, is full of hyperbole. In one of the poem’s few similes, he likens their impending (so he hopes) sexual union to that of "birds of prey." While birds mating is innocent enough, the word "prey" sets us up for the weird violence that the speaker imagines taking place before they actually have sex.
• Line 39-40: His idea of foreplay is eating time. Conceiving time as something that can be devoured makes our head spin. In this case, time becomes a symbol for everything that the speaker thinks traps him. Ironically, the speaker wants to be nourished by the very thing that he wants to be rid of. The irony suggests a paradox. The speaker wants to be rid of time, but needs time in order to enjoy life.

To His Coy Mistress: Rhyme, Form & Meter

We’ll show you the poem’s blueprints, and we’ll listen for the music behind the words.

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 Point of View

Who is the speaker, can she or he read minds, and, more importantly, can we trust her or him?

Our speaker is anonymous. He could be any man, anywhere. 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. We could listen to him say "amorous birds of prey" all day – as long as he doesn’t bring up worms, for crying out loud. (Although some people really like that part.)

We have to face it. He has a mean streak that probably isn’t much fun to deal with in a real-life relationship. But, even if he isn’t fictional, his lust for life would probably charm us. It’s hard not to get excited when he gets excited. Did we mention that he has a way with words?

In addition to beauty, his speech is so thick with irony and sarcasm that it’s hard to know if he ever says what he means, or means what he says. So, maybe all his hurtful words are just jokes. Sigh. He’s so talented, too, surprising us with little jokes. It’s fun to think about all the stuff he brings up: time and the afterlife and whatnot.

But, he’s way too persistent and needs too much attention. He’s a high maintenance speaker. And, his paranoid fantasies of slaying time get to be a bit much on occasion, as funny and clever as they are.

The more times we read the poem, the less sure we are about who the speaker is and what he’s about. On the other hand, no matter how many times we read it, the language that the speaker uses never gets old. Some fresh insight is always embedded in his unique way of talking.

To His Coy Mistress Setting

Where It All Goes Down

There are (at least) two layers of setting involved in "To His Coy Mistress" – the setting we imagine, and the setting that the speaker imagines.

In terms of where the poem is set – where he writes or tells it to the mistress, we can let our imaginations go. The speaker might write the poem in a lonely, depressed state in the poorly lit bar of a rundown hotel. Or, maybe he’s like John Malkovich in Dangerous Liaisons – in a room, using the back of a woman with whom he’s just slept with as a desk on which to write the letter. Or, maybe the speaker and the mistress tour some exotic city together, and the sights inspire him to make up the poem as he goes along. Which brings us to that second layer we mentioned.

The literal setting of "To His Coy Mistress" is one area where we can let our imaginations rest a little. The speaker doesn’t leave everything to our imagination, after all. He does much of the hardest work himself. He takes us, and the mistress (whether or not she is with him when she receives the poem), on a very specific tour. Grab your copy of the poem and check it out. The setting plays a major role in moving the poem along. If you consider our theme "Freedom and Confinement," you can see the poem move from confinement, to freedom, to confinement, to freedom.

In the first stanza, the speaker starts with "crime." He then moves to the Ganges River in India and the Humber Estuary in England. From there, he moves to the body of the mistress, or, at least, "each part." Finally, he goes inside her body, to her heart.

In the second stanza the setting gets creepy quickly. "Deserts of vast eternity," has a beautiful ring to it – and even a feeling of freedom, albeit a lonely freedom. The speaker snatches that image away though, and leads us into a "marble vault" (otherwise known as "the grave").

The third stanza is like a setting resurrection. The poem bursts from "the grave" into "the morning dew," and, then, beyond the mistress’s body, into her "soul." The speaker then imagines their union, and the setting moves up into the sky with the "amorous birds of prey."

In the final couplet, the setting seems dangerous. We feel like the speaker stands very near to the sun, and that he might get burned.

Sound Check

Read this poem aloud. What do you hear?

Poetry is an art obsessed by sound, and there is a blurry line between songwriting and poetry. One big distinction is that songwriters often write the music that goes with their lyrics, while the "music" of a poem is contained within the lyrics, the arrangement of the words on the page. Some poems are more about sound than others. Walt Whitman’s "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" is about how a man becomes a poet when he understands the songs of birds. "To His Coy Mistress" doesn’t go that far, but it still has a lot to do with sound.

You can sing poems, but they are more commonly read aloud. True to parodies and stereotypes of people reading poetry, you will run across people reading them in exaggeratedly super-serious tones, or making wild sounds, or anything silly you can imagine. If you choose to read poems out loud, we suggest reading poetry in a normal speaking voice, letting the lines guide you.

You’ve probably noticed that poets often throw traditional rules of grammar out the window, so don’t let it throw you if the grammar doesn’t seem to make sense. These are usually lines where the poet playing with language. If you read such lines over several times, the poet’s game will usually reveal itself.

Reading a poem out loud, or listening carefully to it in your head if you can’t read it aloud, as many times as you wish, is almost sure to reveal something meaningful about the poem. The revelation might be something ugly, or something beautiful, or even the belief that the poem makes no sense and has nothing to do with you. And, that’s OK, too.

While similar sounding and obviously all part of the same poem, we think that each of the poem’s three stanzas sound a little different from each other. The first stanza, where the speaker describes the idealized world in which the mistress’s "coyness" wouldn’t be a "crime," sounds both fast and slow. The sound of "vegetable love" slows us down. Try to say it fast. Veg-e-ta-ble-love. It’s not natural. "Gaze" is another word that doesn’t want to be said fast. The pace of words like "flood," "refuse," and "rate" speeds things up until we get to the "but" of the second stanza.

Here, something exciting happens. The speaker tells us that he hears something behind him, all the time – "Time’s winged chariot." When we say "time’s winged chariot," we hear a sound like paper, and wind, and wings beating. Scary. No wonder this guy is afraid of time.

He’s so afraid of the sound that it drives him to imagine himself and the mistress dead. The poem begins to sound less like a love poem and more like the work of a twisted creep-o. "Lust" and "dust" and "worms" – when taken together, these sound very formal, dark, and funereal. "Vast," "marble," and even "vault" throw in some freshness and elegance. Although "vault" refers to the grave, it still has a sharper feel to it than "worm." We hear old souls crying and the rustling of things trying to get out. More creepiness.

The third stanza is a big relief: it’s all power and light, and, er, violence. "Transpires," sounds soaring and fresh. "Sweetness" and "ball" sound playful and light. But, what of "prey," "devour," "tear," "rough," and "strife?" These words sound darker, with darker meanings, too, perhaps. The speaker wants to do violence to time, but it sounds a little like he wants to do violence to the speaker, too. Or, maybe he’s just overexcited.

He sounds calmer in the final couplet.

Thus, though we cannot make our sun

Stand still, yet we will make him run. (46)

We think that this sounds bright, fast, slow, and elegant, like a promise that the speaker means to keep. What do you hear?

What’s Up With the Title?

What exactly is a "coy mistress?" As we say over and over in this guide, here’s an opportunity to use your imagination. To provide fuel for our imaginations, let’s look at the meanings of the two words.

If the word "mistress" is in the news or the tabloids nowadays, it probably means one thing: a woman (married or not) having an affair with a married man. And, by "affair," in terms of the news, we mean sex.

Guess what, Shmoopsters! According to the Oxford English Dictionary Online, it means the same thing in the 1650s, when Andrew Marvell probably writes the poem. It also means "a woman loved and courted by a man; a female sweetheart." There’s something for your inner paparazzi to chew on.

In Marvell’s time, "mistress" also means a woman who acts as a patron, or sponsor, for an artist or artists. This sense of the word allows us to imagine a new spin on things. If the speaker’s mistress is a patron, perhaps he’s trying to convince her to sponsor him for a new project, or, in short, to give him money. This interpretation complicates things. See, the poem speaks literally about sex – it references the mistress’s "long-preserved" virginity. So, if she is also the speaker’s patron, he either has or wants to have a sexual relationship with her, or he’s using sex as a metaphor for money. It might even be both. The tabloid journalist in you can get lots of mileage out of that one.

We haven’t given you all the possible meanings of "mistress" here. If you are ever stuck and can’t think of what to write your paper on, you can use this approach (looking up words in the dictionary) to build an argument that’s fun to make. But, before we move on to the word "coy," we should mention that "mistress" is the feminine form of the word "master." Almost all senses of the word "mistress" contain some element of "being in charge."

Now, for "coy." Most commonly, if a person is coy, he or she pretends to be shy, quiet, and reserved. (Early uses of the word imply actual shyness, quietness, and reserve.) The poem’s title then suggests then that the speaker’s mistress only pretends not to want to have sex with him. Either way, it explains why he says her "coyness" is a "crime." If she’s just toying with him, and he cares about her, then he has reason to be upset. On the other hand, if she really doesn’t want to, then he’s accusing her of a crime she hasn’t committed, and playing games with her head.

In addition to the common meaning of "coy," there is another meaning which can help us feel the beauty of the word. A good poet will search tirelessly until he or she finds just the right word. All the nuances of the word can be important. In Marvell’s time, the verb form of "coy" that is, "to coy" means "to stroke or caress." You can find this use in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

If we tie "mistress" and "coy" together, we can imagine a complicated relationship and complicated communications between our speaker and his mistress.

Andrew Marvell’s Calling Card

What is the poet’s signature style?

Experiments with Persona

Andrew Marvell conducts many memorable experiments in persona. Persona is the mask, personality, or character created by an author or actor, similar to the narrator or narrators in a novel. In "Bermudas," the poem’s persona is actually a group of people singing on an "English boat." In "A Dialogue Between the Soul and the Body," the personae are the soul and the body. Marvell doesn’t shy away from the female persona, either. In "The Nymph Complaining for the Death of Her Fawn" (could he have found a longer title, maybe?), the speaker is, as you probably guess, a woman. All of Marvell’s speakers are witty, use surprising images, and rhyme. His work also usually contains some deep philosophical questions, like how sex and time might be related in the poem that we study today. The more Marvell you read, the easier it becomes to see what distinguishes him from other poets.

To His Coy Mistress Theme of Time

The speaker of Andrew Marvell’s poem, "To His Coy Mistress," thinks that time is a super-villain out to get him. He wants to flip the script and control time. It’s not surprising that Marvell was concerned with time. It was a hot topic in the 1600s. Marvell lived during the time of both Galileo Galilei and Sir Isaac Newton, both of whom revolutionized the way we think about time today. Time remains a mystery to us, and Marvell’s poem gives us an opportunity to explore that mystery.

To His Coy Mistress Theme of Sex

If time is the super-villain of Andrew Marvell’s "To His Coy Mistress," then having sex is the super-power he needs to gain control over his enemy. But, sex isn’t so easy to come by. Possibly because only a very special someone would understand the speaker’s ideas about it. With wit and daring, the speaker discusses sex in frank, beautiful, and disturbing language. Sex is another one of those great mysteries that poets never tire of exploring. Marvell’s contribution perhaps paves the way for more open discussions of sex and sexuality.

To His Coy Mistress Theme of Mortality

Mortality, otherwise known as "death," gets a whole stanza in Andrew Marvell’s classic from the 1650s. The speaker presents his vision of the afterlife. While beautiful in terms of the that words the speaker uses to describe it, his vision is miles away from hopeful. He thinks that dying is the ultimate lack of control. It’s not as big of a downer as it sounds like. The speaker is a very witty guy, and his treatment of death makes for some of the most entertaining pick-up lines since John Donne’s "The Flea."

To His Coy Mistress Theme of Freedom and Confinement

Andrew Marvell’s "To His Coy Mistress" is constantly on the move between images of freedom and images of imprisonment. As we read why the speaker feels trapped, and how he thinks he can get out, we feel the need to examine the freedoms and confinements of our own lives. The poem can feel claustrophobic at some moments, but, at other moments, we feel all our confines crumble.

"TO HIS COY MISTRESS"

Had we but world enough, and time,

This coyness, lady, were no crime.

[A woman (more or less young), is the object of this older gentleman's eye. She could be a coquette, one who uses arts to gain the admiration and the affections of men, merely for the gratification of vanity or from a desire of conquest; and, without any intention of responding to the feelings aroused in her plaything. At any rate, it was more the convention in Marvel's day for a pretty woman when she found herself interacting with an available man, to display shyness or reserve or unwillingness, at least for the first little while.]

We would sit down, and think which way

To walk, and pass our long love's day.

Thou by the Indian Ganges' side

Should'st rubies find: I by the tide

[Remember the times of the poet, in this case Marvel: circa 1650. England was beginning its era of great exploration and the discovery of the exotic east.]

Of Humber would complain, I would

Love you ten years before the flood,

And you should, if you please, refuse

Till the conversion of the Jews.

[These lines stumped me, until I received this e-mail from margaux: "... the flood referring to Noah a part belonging to the Genesis in the Bible. So he would love her since ever. And then he adds 'Till the conversion of the Jews' ... most Jews never have converted ... Those two religious references are just a way to tell her that he would love and praise her during a very very long time before getting into any kind of sexual intercourse with her, but ..." And another, "in your analysis of to his coy mistress: the flood part happened sometime after creation. The conversion of the jews is suppose to happen before Armageddon. That's the allusion that Andrew Marvell is using." Well, OK. So, there we have it.]

My vegetable love should grow

Vaster than empires, and more slow ;

["Vegetable love": What do you suppose Marvel meant by this? One of my correspondents wrote, "A vegetable comes from the vegetative part of a plant, as opposed to a fruit, which comes from the reproductive part." At any rate, their love for one and the other may well grow slowly, for what ever reason; but it is a growing thing: deep, complex and vast. A lover is devoted to the loving business of praising his or her lover and is endlessly fascinated with the body and general presence of the other: this is part of being in love.]

An hundred years should go to praise

Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze ;

Two hundred to adore each breast,

But thirty thousand to the rest ;

An age at least to every part,

And the last age should show your heart ;

[Nice bit, "the last age should show your heart." I remember it being said, that once the heat of sexual passion subsides, as it always does, then -- one will be left with a blemished person and the best that can be hoped is that one is left with a beloved who tells the truth, who shuns sham, who has a heart.]

For, lady, you deserve this state,

Nor would I love at lower rate.

[Sexually speaking our older lover could take things slowly with her; if that is what she wants, then, that, is what she should have; he is committed to the conquest, a conquest that can only come about as a result of him fully satisfying her; and, no doubt it is his goal to satisfy her, though it may take thousands of years; and, he would take pleasure throughout the long wait, if, if, only if, there is some prospect of sexual fulfillment. Now, take a breath, for, it is at this point that there appears the most dramatic shift in tempo that I have ever felt in a passage of poetry.]

But at my back I always hear

Time's winged chariot hurrying near ;

And yonder all before us lie

Deserts of vast eternity.

Thy beauty shall no more be found,

Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound

My echoing song: then worms shall try

That long-preserved virginity,

And you quaint honor turn to dust,

And into ashes all my lust :

The grave's a fine and private place,

But none, I think, do there embrace.

Now, therefore, while the youthful hue

Sits on thy skin like morning dew,

And while thy willing soul transpires

At every pore with instant fires,

Now let us sport us while we may,

And now, like amorous birds of prey,

Rather at once our time devour,

Than languish in his slow-chapt power.

Let us roll all our strength and all

Our sweetness up into one ball,

And tear our pleasures with rough strife

Thorough the iron gates of life :

Thus, though we cannot make our sun

Stand still, yet we will make him run.

[I just do not have the heart to break into any of those last lines of Marvel's: they belong together and to be left uninterrupted, undisturbed. By God, this man wants this woman, this central focus point of his sexual passion. He cannot wait, he begs her not to put off sexual union. He eloquently points out that the cares of the moment do not much matter as time is slowly absorbing them both, as it does all things. Marvel displays in full glory his epicurean philosophy.]

By Andrew Marvell (1621-1678).

Andrew Marvell's poem, ‘To His Coy Mistress’ (hereafter I shall refer to the poem as ‘Mistress’) is a beautifully provocative poem. ‘Mistress’ encompasses many literary techniques including tone, imagery, alliteration, metaphor, irony, enjambment and similes. It is written in iambic tetrameter as a three part proposition to his mistress, and Marvell employs alternative poetic styles (as mentioned previously) to enhance each of the three arguments in the poem. In essence, ‘Mistress’ examines the assertion that after death, morality is of no value. Marvell accentuates the triviality of his mistress being vain during her lifetime, emphasizing that she must do away with all trepidation when it comes to temptation. Like many metaphysical poets of the time Marvell investigates the popular Roman term coined by Quintus Horatius Flaccus (better known as Horace) “carpe diem quam minium credo la postero” (enjoy the present and trust as little as possible to the future ). By seizing the day, she can avoid the regrets of not having taken part in the more adventurous side of life. For people who adhere to the mundane and avoid the more adventurous experiences are doing so at their own detriment especially considering their already brief time here on earth. It is of interest that Marvell also blends into this poem a political/social commentary about King Charles II and it is this that rationalises why this was not published in his lifetime.

The three parts to ‘Mistress’ can be identified with the change of tone and pace in the poem. For example ‘Had we but world enough, and time, This coyness, lady, were no crime.” in these two opening lines, Marvell uses punctuation in order to slow down the pace of the poem without interfering with the constant iambic tetrameter throughout the poem. In doing this it reflects the message that time is of no importance. This is followed by the repeated use of open vowel sounds ‘would’ ‘which’ ‘way’ and ‘our’ in the next two lines to make the reader sound wistful as if they are sighing ‘We would sit down, and think which way To walk, and pass our long love’s day’. To further woo and enchant his audience, alliteration is also used to great effect, in line 1 ‘we’ and ‘world’, in line 2 ‘coyness’ and ‘crime’, in Line 3 ‘we would’ and ‘which way’ and finally in line 4 ‘long love’s’.

In the next 16 lines, it can be sensed the reader has upon his lips a slow smirk forming that coincides with the sly tone of the first argument. Marvell conjures up ethereal, tantalizingly beautiful images to flatter his mistress with an insincere exaggeration of her beauty and virtue. The imagery is insincere because it travels the full, albeit completely unrealistic, gamut of time and space. The first example of this is with ‘Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side Should’st rubies find’ where he uses the metaphor relating the magically distant, recently discovered unspoilt Ganges’ river to the equally uncharted waters of his mistress’ sexuality. The image of his mistress searching for rubies set in stark contrast of his whereabouts ‘I by the tide Of Humber would complain’ whilst being a romantic image also reinforces her virginity.

With lines 7-8‘I would Love you ten years before the flood’ refers to Genesis 6-9 and the image of the incredibly pious Noah et al in his ark after forty days and forty nights of rain; (This is in itself an ironic image as God actually tells Noah and his three sons to engage in sexual intercourse. ) in conjunction with lines 9-10 ‘And you should, if you please, refuse Till the conversion of the Jews’ sets up the period of time of which his mistress may take to consider his proposition. Obviously this is an impossibly infinite time frame which makes it a both an idealistic thought and romantic gesture. Lines 11-12 ‘My vegetable love should grow Vaster than empires, and more slow’ is a magnificent image not from the phallic symbol it creates but of the fact that vegetables, unlike fruits, are not created in the reproductive area of the plant. That is to say that fruits such as apples are what the flower becomes after pollination, whereas vegetables for example carrots are the roots, asparagus the stems and lettuce the leaves of the plant. Despite this it is still an ironic image as it is written in the conditional tense (if they had all the time in the world, which he knows they do not) and continuing with the carrot metaphor, the carrot (vegetable love) grows out of sight (subconsciously) whereas you will see in the next paragraph his lust grows quickly and consciously.

So far, this first section sounds romantic; yet the next few lines really push the point home. ‘An hundred years should go to praise Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze: Two hundred to adore each breast: But thirty thousand to the rest; An age at least for every part, And the last age should you show your heart’ here Marvell again shows scant disregard to the concept of time using increasing numbers to express his ever growing love for his mistress. However it is the detail that he spends 4 times the time on each of her breasts rather than her eyes to prove that it is not his love for her that is growing but in fact his cod piece! Yet the piece-de-resistance comes with the use of enjambment (lines 12-18) where the reader becomes breathless magnifying the readers’ completely enamoured state. The final couplet in part 1 ‘For, lady, you deserve this state, Nor would I love at lower rate’ is a lovely way to finish off the first argument. Marvell again uses punctuation to slow down the speech, and alliteration (‘love’ and ‘lower’) to emphasise his point. To smooth the transition into his second argument his use of the irony between line 1 ‘Had we but…and time’ and 19 ‘you deserve this state’, is a masterstroke, being that as she is mortal she cannot achieve that state. I would be remiss if I did not point out the snide remark he makes (line 20) about he being a better lover than a younger man, which to me is just gorgeous.

In the second part of his argument, the imagery and tone change dramatically. Gone are the fanciful ethereal images of far off exotic countries and infinite time, instead we have the honest and sobering images of mortality and contemporary life. Lines 21-22 the first of the second argument ‘But at my back I always hear Time’s winged chariot hurrying near’ we can identify the shift in tone not only by the prepositional conjugate ‘But’ yet through the change in speed that the poem is read. The imagery of Apollo and his chariot is especially apt for numerous reasons. Apollo, was not only conceived not by his father Zeus’ wife Hera, but by Leto an inferior class of divinity or nymph (or in literary terms a young and beautiful woman) but also had a weakness for them (not to mention many conquests, but no marriages ) similar to that of the reader of the poem. It is also well known from Greek mythology that Apollo with the aid of four horses drew the sun across the sky. ‘And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity’ continues with the time theme; however, now it is far more sincere and melancholic. It is this abrupt change of imagery and metaphors which the writer uses to confront and confuse his audience in order to persuade her into submitting to him. With this craftily applied offering of honest and distinguishable images, it lends credence to the first part of the poem where the imagery was far more insincere and capricious.

‘Mistress’ continues with the dark imagery of impending death with ‘Thy beauty shall no more be found; Nor in thy marble vault, shall sound My echoing Song’ pointing out that her beauty will only last for a short time, and that she will be a long time dead. He goes further to say that once she is dead and in her tomb that she will never again be able to hear how much he loves her. Marvell uses another phallic metaphor in lines 27-28 with ‘then Worms shall try That long preserv’d Virginity’. The poem continues with references to the Genesis with the following lines ‘And your quaint Honour turn to dust; And in ashes all my Lust.’ The final couplet of the second part summarises his argument ‘The Grave’s a fine and private place, But none I think do there embrace’ however, despite its morbid feel, there is a deliberate humorous inflection so as not to create a sombre mood, which would be counterproductive to his cause. The use of capitalised nouns in ‘Song’ ‘Worms,’ ‘Virginity,’ ‘Honour,’ ‘Lust’ and ‘Grave’s’ further stresses the iambic meter to press the importance of the imagery he is creating.

The conclusion to the argument is heralded by the first use of similes in the poem with ‘Now therefore, while the youthful hew Sits on thy skin like morning dew,’ Marvell uses this turn of phrase for two reasons. Firstly it is to act as a catalyst to shake off the doom and gloom of the previous argument and secondly it acts as a metaphor for the coming of spring after his mistress’ cold wintry, dare I say frigid behaviour. ‘And while thy willing Soul transpires At every pore with instant Fires’ uses the delicious metaphor of not literal flames but the ardent heat of desire he insists she feels for him; the use of many fires as opposed to the singular entrenches in us his carnal desire. In this line the issue of time is revisited with ‘instant’ rather than constant used to call attention to its effect on transience within the movement of the poem. The speed changes to an increased tempo so much so that it could be mistaken for a ballad or a joyous hymn. Once more the reader attempts to dazzle and confuse his audience in order to awaken her hot blooded desire with the following line, ‘Now let us sport us while we may’ the use of single syllable words and lack of punctuation leaves the reader out of breath in preparation for the second simile and its strong lusty imagery ‘And now, like am’rous birds of prey’. Marvell even finds time to throw in some internal rhyme with the line ‘Rather at once our Time devour, Than languish in his slow-chapt pow’r.’ What is more the repetition of this open vowel sound throughout the conclusion continues to add to the sensual connotations of the argument. For any readers still in doubt of the reference to Apollo earlier in the poem the next few lines prove the point effortlessly ‘Let us roll all our Strength, and all Our sweetness, up into one Ball’ not only is this a metaphor to the courtship of eagles but also to the ritual of young priests of the island of Leukas, Greece, to qualify for the service at the temple of Apollo .

The final four lines make one last final plea for the mistress to surrender herself to him ‘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.’ The most interesting part of the final couplet is the use of the imagery of the Sun, for apart from its reference to Apollo and time it was also used in place of the word Son. The Son in this case Marvell attributes to Charles II, the son of the assassinated King Charles I, who fled to France for nine years after his defeat in the Battle of Worchester . This can be confirmed as Marvell’s first poems written whilst still at Cambridge celebrated the birth of Charles I; although Marvell later became sympathetic to the Parliamentary cause where he first became acquainted with Oliver Cromwell. This also explains the use of the line ‘Till the conversion of the Jews’ as Cromwell (the third person to sign Charles I death warrant) was responsible for trying to encourage the Jews to return to England in 1657 (after they had been banished by Edward I for 350 years) to help rebuild the economy after the civil wars decimated the country .

‘Mistress’ is a wonderfully lyrical poem written in the first person, despite the third person inference in the title. It uses Petrarchan conventions in the greatly exaggerated metaphors to woo his mistress. Marvell is a highly gifted poet who uses his verbal prowess to attempt to trick and dominate his mistress into sleeping with him. It almost appears as he is showing off, to prove that he can win over both her heart and her head (and other metaphysical poets as well) in a consummate display of his rhetorical mastery. All credit must go to a man that influences one of history’s greatest poets in T S Eliot. Eliot makes numerous allusions to this poem in his poem ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ and in ‘The Waste Land.’ For example in ‘Love Song’ the imagery of time is used repetitiously when he writes ‘There will be time, there will be time,’ ‘Time for you and time for me’ and ‘And indeed there will be time To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”’ The phrase used in the second argument in ‘Mistress’ ‘But at my back I always hear Time’s winged chariot hurrying near’ is attributed by Eliot to his line(196) from ‘The Fire Sermon’ in ‘Waste Land’ with the nearly identical ‘But at my back from time to time I hear The sound of horns and motors.'

The poem, To His Coy Mistress, by Andrew Marvell brings out some actions that some of us have experienced or even thought about in this concise poem.  This poem is very appealing to the male senses and what some make are like.  Some women could be thought of when this is read. Andrew Marvell puts it in words that make it seem as if it was very acceptable. 

 The first twenty lines of the poem start to talk about how much this girl means to this perticular man.  The main character in the poem talks about how he will wait forever to be with her.  He mentions that “We would sit down and think which way To walk and pass our long love’s day.” (st. 3-4)  His views as of now are that he wants to take his time and he doesn’t have go anywhere.  This man certainly wants to plan things out so that it will be perfect.   Another line from the poem that makes him the gentleman that he is portraying to be is “An hundred years should go to praise Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze. “(st.13-14)  I think he is saying that we will give praise to her eyes that are so magnificent.  Her eyes are so beautiful, because of which he will praise them for hundred years before they can truly be together.  Later on it mentions that he will praise her breast each for two hundred years.  The mood is set that this man certainly wants to be with this woman.  He is telling her how he feels and wants her to understand that he really wants to be with her. 

  

    In the next twelve lines we begin to see a bit of difference in the attitude.  As of now the guy is thinking, well maybe we don’t have enough time to sit around and wait.  The chariot’s of time is pointed out  by saying that it is hurrying near.  Maybe we don’t have enough time anymore.  We should hurry up and get with it.  “Thy beauty shall no more be found, Nor, in thy marble vault shall sound.”(st. 25-26)  I imagine that he is telling her that if we wait to long then you shall be dead and then we would have never gotten the chance.  He is trying to tell her that they should hurry it up.   Later on in the poem it talks about how his lust turns into ashes.  The reason being is that if she passes away then he would have never gotten the chance of getting her into bed.  The man tries to show explain to her why it isn’t the best idea to die as a virgin.  He wants to help that out. 

  

    The last fourteen lines tries to show how passionate it will be.  There is no reason why they should wait if it is going to be that intense.  “Now let us sport us while we may, And now, like amorous birds of prey. “(st. 33-34)  The man who began telling this woman that he will wait forever, even until the end of time just be with her.  Then went to persuading her to hurry things up a bit because they don’t have all the time in the world.  Now he wants to show her how extreme it will be.  “Let us roll all our strength and all Our sweetness up into one ball”(st. 41-42).  There he describes what it would be like.  He thinks that the best thing that could happen is that they can get into bed.  As of now that is all he seems to care about. 

     As a guy writing this, I believe that this is not the best approach to use for picking up women.  It gives you no chance with anyone else when they find out what you are really like.  This poem expressed many feelings that people feel.  I think that many people have kind of always wanted to try this way, but just had to much moral to even go through with it.

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