 Andrew Marvell (1621- 1678)

 Biography
💜Andrew Marvell, (born March 31, 1621, Winestead,
Yorkshire, England—died August 18, 1678, London), English
poet whose political reputation overshadowed that of his
poetry until the 20th century. He is now considered to be one of
the best Metaphysical poets.
💜Marvell was educated at Hull grammar school and Trinity
College, Cambridge, taking a B.A. in 1639. His father’s death in
1641 may have ended Marvell’s promising academic career. He
was abroad for at least five years (1642–46), presumably as a
tutor. In 1651–52 he was tutor to Mary, daughter of Lord
Fairfax, the Parliamentary general, at Nun Appleton, Yorkshire,
during which time he probably wrote his notable poems “Upon
Appleton House” and “The Garden” as well as his series of
Mower poems.
💜Although earlier opposed to Oliver Cromwell’s
Commonwealth government, he wrote “An Horatian Ode upon
Cromwell’s Return from Ireland” (1650), and from 1653 to 1657
he was a tutor to Cromwell’s ward William Dutton. In 1657 he
became assistant to John Milton as Latin secretary in the
foreign office. “The First Anniversary” (1655) and “On the Death
of O.C.” (1659) showed his continued and growing admiration
for Cromwell. In 1659 he was elected member of Parliament for
Hull, an office he held until his death, serving skillfully and
effectively.
💜After the restoration of Charles II in 1660, Marvell turned to
political verse satires—the most notable was The Last
Instructions to a Painter, against Lord Clarendon, Charles’s lord
chancellor—and prose political satire, notably The Rehearsal
Transpros’d (1672–73). Marvell is also said to have interceded
on behalf of Milton to have him freed from prison in 1660. He
wrote a commendatory poem for the second edition of Milton’s
Paradise Lost. His political writings favoured the toleration of
religious dissent and attacked the abuse of monarchical power.
💜While Marvell’s political reputation has faded and his
reputation as a satirist is on a par with others of his time, his
small body of lyric poems, first recommended in the 19th
century by Charles Lamb, has since appealed to many readers,
and in the 20th century he came to be considered one of the
most notable poets of his century. Marvell was eclectic: his “To
His Coy Mistress” is a classic of Metaphysical poetry; the
Cromwell odes are the work of a classicist; his attitudes are
sometimes those of the elegant Cavalier poets; and his nature
poems resemble those of the Puritan Platonists. In “To His Coy
Mistress,” which is one of the most famous poems in the
English language, the impatient poet urges his mistress to
abandon her false modesty and submit to his embraces before
time and death rob them of the opportunity to love:
  To His Coy Mistress
To His Coy Mistress, poem of 46 lines by Andrew Marvell, published in
1681. The poem treats the conventional theme of the conflict between
love and time in a witty and ironic manner. The poet opens by telling
his mistress that, given all the time in the world, he would spend
hundreds of years praising each part of her body, while she could spend
hundreds of years refusing his advances. But he gently reminds her that
their mortal days are not so abundant and urges her to submit to his
embraces before her beauty fades and they both die. The poet’s
argument is ingeniously constructed and presented, and the reader is
left with both an amusing portrait of an impatient lover and a deeper
sense of the evanescence of life.

Poem
Structure of the poem
• The reader notices that the poem consists of one stanza made up by
46 lines.❤️The rhyme scheme is AABBCCDDEEFF..., therefore the poem
consists of rhyming couplets.❤️The reader can find out that the poem
can be organized into two main sequences following the development
of the argumentation:❤️o from line 1 to 20 there is a first sequence
characterized by the use of simple past and present conditional for
verbs❤️o while at line 21 there is the turning point in the
argumentation and starts the second sequence. 💖 reader can also
notice the recurring use of connective expression that unveils the
argumentative structure: but, therefore, thus..
POEM
To His Coy Mistress
BY ANDREW MARVELL
Had we but world enough and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love’s day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
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.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow;
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.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd 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 your quaint honour 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-chapped power.
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.

Summary
To His Coy Mistress” is a metaphysical poem in which the speaker
attempts to persuade his resistant lover that they should have sexual
intercourse. He explains that if they had all the time in the world, he
would have no problem with their relationship moving this slowly.
However, he goes on to explain, they are mortal, and once they die
they will be unable to be intimate together. The poem appears to serve
dual purposes: first, to persuade the mistress to love, and second, to
comment on mortality in its inevitability and grotesqueness. It is the
latter objective which adds the philosophical aspect to this love poem.
This poem is admired for its metaphysical imagery. Metaphysical poetry
was primarily known for the use of extended metaphor and conceit, as
well as unlikely comparisons between abstract and worldly ideas. The
term “metaphysical” was applied to a small group of 17th century poets,
Marvell among them. The poems tended to have some philosophical
bases, and this combined with experimental stylistic aspects helped to
characterize them as metaphysical.
“To His Coy Mistress” is written in iambic tetrameter, and rhymes in
couplets (AA, BB, CC, DD, and so on). It has been recognized as one of
his most famous poems, and there is speculation as to whether or not
20th century Modernist poet T.S. Eliot was responding to Marvell in his
famous poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Clearly, Marvell’s
work has continued to have an impact on literature, especially
posthumously.

To His Coy Mistress” Themes

Theme Love and Death
“To His Coy Mistress” is a love poem: it celebrates beauty, youth, and
sexual pleasure. However, the speaker of the poem is haunted by
mortality. Though he imagines a luxuriously slow love that takes
thousands of years to reach consummation, he knows such a thing is
impossible: he will die before it can be accomplished. Death cannot be
delayed or defeated; the only response to death, according to the
speaker, is to enjoy as much pleasure as possible before it comes. He
urges the woman he loves not to wait, to enjoy the pleasures of life
without restraint. The poem draws a contrast between two kinds of
love: the full, rich love that would be possible if everyone lived forever,
and the rushed, panicked love that mortal beings are forced to enjoy.
Analysis of Literary Devices in “To His
Coy Mistress”
Literary devices are tools that enable the writers to present their ideas,
emotions, and feelings with the use of these devices. Andrew Marvel
has also used some literary elements in this poem to adore the beauty
of his mistress. The analysis of some of the literary devices used in this
poem has been analyzed below.

❤️Assonance: Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds in the same

line such as the sound of /ou/ in “And you should, if you please,
refuse”.
❤️Imagery: Imagery is used to make the readers perceive things with
their five senses. For example, “Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side”;
“Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near”; “Deserts of vast eternity” and
“then worms shall try that long-preserved virginity”.
❤️Consonance: Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds in the
same line such as the sound of /l/ in “And while thy willing soul
transpires”.
❤️Metaphor: It is a figure of speech used to compare two objects that
are different. There are two metaphors used in this poem. The first is
used in the fourth line, “To walk, and pass our long love’s day” where
he compares the life span of his and his mistress to one day. The
second is used in the eleventh line, “My vegetable love should grow”
where he compares his love with slow growth of vegetables.
❤️Hyperbole: Hyperbole is a device used to exaggerate a statement for
the sake of emphasis. The poet has used hyperbole in the fifteenth line,
“Two hundred to adore each breast.”
❤️: There is only one simile used in this poem. In the line thirty-four
“Sits on thy skin like morning dew” the poet compares woman’s
youthful skin to morning dew.
❤️Enjambment: Enjambment refers to the continuation of a sentence
without the pause beyond the end of a line, couplet or stanza. For
example,