e itself becomes a timeless quality to be sought and enjoyed.
The main point of the poem is that the poet is arguing with his mistress to seduce her and pointing to the way time passes for support. Yet, other themes are also involved, including love, fleeting time, and human mortality. Marvell intertwines these philosophical concepts with the seductive argument of the speaker. References are made to the era before the biblical Flood, ancient India where rubies are found, and the possibility of converting the Jews to Christianity in some distant future. These references extend the time frame and show how much time the actions of the lover would take if it were possible. This sense that there is not enough time is something we have all felt at some time, and I know older relatives who tell me they have felt it more as they grow older.
Kenneth Burke developed the dramatism approach to unify rhetoric and poetic in a single analytical framework The relationship between the audience and the communicator is most important:
Audiences sense a joining of interests through style as much as through content. Burke says the effective communicator can show consubstantiality by giving signs in language and delivery that his or her properties are the same as theirs (Griffin 309).
In this poem, the relationship is established in the dramatic structure of the poem as the speaker addresses a silent woman. The poem is written in three stanzas in the shape of an argument. The argument in the first stanza is that the lovers could wait if they had the time to do so; in the second stanza, the poet says that they do not have the time; and in the third stanza, the poet concludes that the lovers should not wait given the circumstances of life. The poet may use logic to develop his argument, but at heart he is pleading for her to agree with him. In the first stanza, the poet describes all that could be done if there were time--the two coul...