Metaphysical Poet Andrew Marvell

Andrew Marvell was one of the so-called metaphysical poets of the seventeenth century, a title conferred on a group of poets with certain similar approaches by Herbert Grierson and T.S. Eliot. Eliot himself notes that "[n]ot only is it extremely difficult to define metaphysical poetry, but difficult to decide what poets practice it and in which of their verses" (Eliot 23). Grierson offers a definition when he states that metaphysical poetry is poetry which "has been inspired by a philosophical conception of the universe and the role assigned to the human spirit in the great drama of existence" (Grierson 3).

"To His Coy Mistress" is a poem of seduction offered as an argument directed at the lady of the title. Now, he offers an argument as to why she should submit to him, and he uses an extended metaphor to describe the life-cycle, to show how short it truly is, and so to argue that time is fleeting and so the lovers should consummate their love while they may. The woman is "coy" because she has been resisting the advances of the poet, and her coyness is a crime to him because he wishes to make love to her and she is resisting him. Marvell extends this situation through numerous references to events in history and so creates a sense of time as a continuing and rapidly-moving element in both life and the poem.

The speaker is trying to persuade his mistress to let him make love to her. Her age is not clear except that she is young, probably in her twenties, with the bea

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makes them real. From the first, this act is linked with nature: "Iaponica/ Glistens like coral in all of the neighboring gardens" (4-5). There are two speakers, the first being the trainee in the opening stanza, and the other being the trainer who describes what each trainee has and does not have as he names the parts. The first speaker returns in the last stanza, and in both the first and last stanza, the speaker makes reference to the garden and the bees in the gardens and so brings in the natural world as a contrast. The poem is not a dialogue, however, in that the trainee is speaking to the reader only and not to the trainer. who in turn speaks to the trainee and not directly to the reader. The garden imagery usually indicates en evocation of nature in the form of the garden and greenery, but it also usually includes an implicit reference to the Garden of Eden specifically and so indicates a return to innocence. The two strains, one religious and the other folk-lore, intertwine. The Fall of Man refers to the events in the Garden of Eden in which Adam and Eve disobeyed God. The story is told in Genesis as the serpent seduces Eve into partaking of the forbidden fruit: "In this account everything hinges on the tree of

Category: Literature - M