A Formalist Reading of Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”

(spiritual, intangible, insensible) qualities to the concrete (physical, tangible, sensible) objects; e.g., he compares ‘love’ to a ‘vegetable’ (line 11) in a wagon metaphor. Actually, he uses hyperboles to exaggerate and emphasize his statements to make a more effective poem. Furthermore, this device is powerful enough (here, in closing 3 couplets) to represent human condition in violent, memorable and witty metaphor.

Next, the poet has used metaphysical and microcosmic imagery of ‘time and space’ with much exaggeration. The poem starts with— ‘Had we but World enough and Time’ (1). Then we get the reference to the East and West from lines 5 to 10, where the speaker has used the distance between Indian Ganges and Humber to represent the vast space. The length of time is suggested too by the allusion of ‘ten years before the flood… till the conversion of the Jews.’ Further, the speaker’s unsatisfied desire to court her implies their lack of time. Indeed, Marvell has successfully treated the ‘carpe diem’ motif while dealing with ‘time and space’. Finally, time is conquered by the intensity of passion; and the poet’s yearning metonymies that of all human species of all time and space.

Again, the poem is a persuasion to love in which the speaker uses the emotional power of images with the formal logic. The synthesis that develops from the dialectical movement of the poem is the identification of love with death. For example, the imagery of ‘birds of prey’ and ‘rough strife’ suggests a self–destructiveness, even a death wish. And, the strong image of ‘Iron gates of life’ symbolizes the harsh reality of the world. So, one should seize the passing moment in response to one’s physical demand with all energy and vigor

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