1. To His Coy Mistress
Namrataba Zala
Semester: 1
Roll No.: 20
Enrollment No.: 2069108420170033
Batch: 2016-2018
Email Id : namratazala2707@gmail.com
S. B. Gardi Department of English
Bhavnagar University
2. Poet
• Andrew Marvell was an English
metaphysical poet, satirist and
politician who sat in the House of
Commons at various times between
1659 and 1678.
• During the Commonwealth period
he was a colleague and friend of John
Milton.
• His poems range from the love-song
"To His Coy Mistress", to evocations
of an aristocratic country house and
garden in "Upon Appleton House"
and "The Garden", the political
address "An Horatian Ode upon
Cromwell's Return from Ireland", and
the later personal and political satires
"Flecknoe" and "The Character of
Holland".
3. To His Coy Mistress
• The speaker of the poem starts by
addressing a woman who has been slow
to respond to his romantic advances. In
the first stanza he describes how he would
love her if he were to be unencumbered
by the constraints of a normal lifespan. He
could spend centuries admiring each part
of her body and her resistance to his
advances would not discourage him.
• In the second stanza, he laments how
short human life is. Once life is over, the
speaker contends, the opportunity to
enjoy one another is gone, as no one
embraces in death. In the last stanza, the
speaker urges the woman to requite his
efforts, and argues that in loving one
another with passion they will both make
the most of the brief time they have to
live.
4. To His Coy Mistress As Metaphysical
Poetry
• Metaphysical school of poetry that had been
introduced by Donne and was adopted by poets
such as Herbert, Crashaw and Cowley forwarded
an exquisite climate of thought. Andrew Marvell
is considered as one of the finest poets of the
metaphysical verse because of his predilection to
wit, interest in argument, allusive style of writing
and wonderful usage of metaphysical conceits.
“To His Coy Mistress” is his most celebrated
poem which showcases some of the most
conformed traits of metaphysical poetry.