"To His Coy Mistress": Mini-Essay

Andrew Marvell divides his poem To His Coy Mistress into three separate stanzas, each consisting of a different phase in a young man’s desire to be with his mistress in a timeless world. Marvell categorizes the first stanza as the young couple’s ideal world of timeless love where they can cherish every moment together. He clearly states the unrealistic features of this world by his heavy hyperbolic statements: “I would love you ten years before the flood”, Marvell tries to articulate the fact that the man would love his mistress for as long as he wishes, until time runs out and he possibly couldn’t anymore. However, Marvell then has a tonal shift leading into the second stanza illustrating the unlikely nature of the couple’s timeless dream world. He exemplifies the impurities of the realistic world, only weakening the couple’s ambitions towards their desires. The man realizes in the real world there is a time limit for how long the couple’s love can last. Therefore, the young man understands with this burden of time, he must cherish every moment he has with his mistress. Marvell classifies the man’s hope for his love to last with his mistress in the theme “carpe diem”, meaning seize the day. Marvell uses these different schemes for stanzas to characterize the young man’s realization of how short life is. Consequently, appreciating every aspect of live is essential to the young man because all he wants to do is be with his mistress.