Tuesday, May 1, 2012

How does Andrew Marvell's poem "To His Coy Mistress" present the conflict between love and time?

The speaker of Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" follows a structure of classical argumentation: the first stanza presents an idealized claim, the next one an objection to that claim, and the final a conclusion synthesized from the two, an argument that outlines and resolves the conflict between time and love. The first lines of the second and third stanzas, containing the words "but" and "therefore," demonstrate the progress of this argument to the the speaker's desired conclusion, concluding with "thus," the resolution in the final couplet. Conceived of as an argument that synthesizes the ideal and the actual, the speaker's presentation of the conflict between love and time becomes clearer. The lady's "coyness" would be acceptable if she and the speaker had "world enough and time"--in this idealized state, the limitations the second stanza describes would not be a problem. Indeed, with unlimited time the speaker's love might "grow / vaster than empires, and more slow." Limited by time, though, the lady and the speaker must "roll all our strength and all / Our sweetness up into one ball." "One ball" contrasts directly with a love allowed by time to grow "vaster than empires." In other words, the speaker claims that the limitations of time offer him and the lady a different opportunity. If their love cannot grow vast, it can be compressed into "one ball" that can achieve an intensity capable of responding to their mortality: "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." Time cannot be stopped, but it can be seized, and love offers the most effective means, the speaker suggests, of doing so.
In addition to the structure and content of the argument, which presents the conflict between time and love and synthesizes it, the poem's form makes the reader feel the limits of time. The poem is written in iambic tetrameter, rather than the more common iambic pentameter, a shift that makes the lines feel tighter or more clipped, allowing the reader to experience, in the line, the limitations of time the speaker describes. At the same time, though, these short lines become something like the "one ball" the speaker describes: the line and time impose limitations, but these limitations are the very materials of transcendence. There is no poetry without the strictures of the line, just as, for the speaker, love is made more powerful because time necessitates the compression of its intensity into the present.


In this "carpe diem" poem, Marvell presents time as the enemy of the young couple, personifying him as one whose "slow-chapped power" can ultimately defeat them unless they make the decision to "devour" him in turn by taking action. It is interesting that this active verb, "devour," is offered as something the young couple can do to their time; normally it is time who is imagined devouring mortals. This word choice serves to prove the speaker's point that, while time is inexorable, there is something to be done about it. By acting upon their love now, they cannot make time "stand still, yet we will make him run."
The concept of time in this poem, then, is of an adversary who is expecting the couple to behave in one way, but whom they can defeat by behaving in a different way. If the "coy mistress" insists on being courted extremely slowly and holding onto her "long-preserved virginity," then "time's winged chariot" will overtake them, and the result will be that they run out of time and end up food for "worms," lying in their graves. It will be too late for their love, and time will have won. The speaker acknowledges that his mistress deserves to be loved and courted for many aeons (look at the beginning of the poem for the fantasy of slowed-down time he creates) but also states that this is not possible. Instead, the only way to defeat time is to "sport us while we may."

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