You are to submit a four page essay on Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress.” That is 1200 words.

One tact to take in approaching this first paper is to adopt one of the critical approaches from HCAL and make it your own. Show what you have learned by using the principles and techniques of one of those approaches to bring understanding of the possible significance of the text. Try to avoid a patchwork of incoherent perspectives that don’t really work together.

Another tact is just to approach the text to discover its significance from your own perspective, but whatever approach you take, it is vital to quote the poem and use it to support your point of view. I know you’ve seen a lot of perspectives on the poem, but certain issues or themes may have really struck you as important or revealing. Be sure to quote the words from the Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature (HCAL) also to support your insights and conclusions.

You have been given the keys to the kingdom, and now you can see the whole elephant (meaning the many views on the poem in this case). Look at the poem with your new eyes and tell me what you see; what does each word, each line, each stanza, and this poem, say to you now?

Below Here is The Poem Itself

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.