His Coy Mistress Mood

The concept of love and lust have been echoing throughout the history of literature. This is especially prevalent in Andrew Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress. In this 17th century poem, a male speaker runs his poetic lines to a female to accomplish one goal- convince her to have sexual intercourse with him. Through a transitioning mood, a wide spectrum of imagery, and series of metaphors and similes, Marvell is able to capture and reignite the old Latin elegy of Carpe Diem. Like a majority of love poems, a romantic mood must be established in order for the poem to have its full effect. Although the romantic mood was established in the beginning parts of the poem, it quickly transitioned into “rushed and hurried” (Shen). In line 22, the speaker makes an allusion of “Time’s winged chariot hurrying near” to push this conceptual mood (Marvell). The speaker does so in order to build up on the romantic mood he had establish earlier. Through this, the speaker is pushing the mood into the sense of urgency. Following the theme of carpe diem, this rushed feeling is intended to persuade the female to have sex with him while there’s still time left in her dwindling beauty. This urgent mood is furthermore embellished by the …show more content…
With such a simile as “like amorous birds of prey,” the speaker is directly correlating sexual desires to the lady. No longer is he embellishing his desires with the previous points such as the Indian Ganges, but now in the final phase of the poem, the speaker is making full use of his silver tongue to make the final push in accomplishing his goal of having sex with the lady. Not only is he remarking against a one night stand, but rather, the speaker fully enhances his true sexual desire to seize the “days”; the speaker intends to make days quickly past as the two copulate under the pretense of “making the sun run” (line 46)