Metaphysical poets, selected poems Contents
- Social / political context
- Religious / philosophical context
- Literary context: ideas and innovations
- Aire and Angels
- A Hymn to God the Father
- A Hymn to God, my God, in my Sicknesse
- A Nocturnall upon St. Lucies day
- At the Round Earth's Imagin'd Corners
- A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
- Synopsis of Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
- Commentary on Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
- Language and tone in Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
- Structure and versification in Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
- Imagery and symbolism in Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
- Themes in Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
- A Valediction: of Weeping
- Batter my heart
- Death be not Proud
- Elegie XIX: Going to Bed
- Elegie XVI: On his Mistris
- Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward
- Lovers' Infiniteness
- Oh my blacke Soule!
- Satyre III: 'On Religion'
- Show me Deare Christ
- Since She Whom I Lov'd
- Song: Goe, and catche a falling starre
- The Anniversarie
- The Dreame
- The Extasie
- The Flea
- The Good-morrow
- The Sunne Rising
- This is my playes last scene
- Twicknam Garden
- What if this present
- Aaron
- Affliction I
- Death
- Discipline
- Easter Wings
- Jordan I
- Jordan II
- Life
- Love II
- Man
- Prayer I
- Redemption
- The Church-floore
- The Collar
- Vertue
- Hymn in Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament
- Hymn to St Teresa
- St Mary Magdalene, or the Weeper
- To the Countesse of Denbigh
- Ascension - Hymn
- Man
- Regeneration
- The Night
- The Retreate
- The Water-fall
- A Dialogue between Soul and Body
- On a Drop of Dew
- The Coronet
- The Definition of Love
- The Garden
- The Mower Against Gardens
- The Mower to the Glo-Worms
- The Mower's Song
- The Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Faun
- The Picture of Little T.C. in a Prospect of Flowers
- To his Coy Mistress
- Upon Appleton House, to my Lord Fairfax
- An Elegie upon the Death of the Deane of Paul's Dr John Donne
- To a Lady that Desired I would Love her
Synopsis of To his Coy Mistress
A reluctant lady
Marvell's To his Coy Mistress is one of the best known Metaphysical love poems. Like several other Metaphysical love poems, this is to a ‘supposed' mistress, here portrayed as very shy, or at least, reluctant. There is a conciseness and neatness about the verse, which is written in Marvell's favourite metre, the iambic tetrameter couplet form. Marvell, possibly because he was as good at writing poetry in Latin as in English, also has a cosmopolitan polish and epigrammatic wit in his language that Donne lacks.
The transience of life
For all the apparent playfulness, and its satire of Elizabethan conventional love poetry, the poem is deadly serious as it tackles the great Elizabethan theme of the transience of life. Time is the great enemy of love. Half a century after the Elizabethan era, Marvell's poetry still has the same intensity.
Investigating To his Coy Mistress
- Generally speaking, why should time be seen as the great enemy of love?
- Look up the phrase carpe diem
- What does it mean?
1. A branch of philosophy
2. The Metaphysical Poets were a group of seventeenth century English poets who used philosophical ideas extensively in their imagery and especially in conceits.
The particular measurement in a line of poetry, determined by the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables (in some languages, the pattern of long and short syllables). It is the measured basis of rhythm.
A term used of speech rhythms in blank verse; an iambic rhythm is an unstressed, or weak, beat followed by a stressed, or strong, beat. It is a rising metre.
A line of verse consisting of four metrical feet (in modern verse) or eight feet (in classical verse).
A rhyming 2-line unit of verse.
Concise, neat and witty, in the style of an epigram.
1. A play of mind that can link dissimilar ideas together for humorous or insightful effect; the ability to play with words.
2. A person who does this.
A genre which ridicules some one or something. It can be poetry, drama or fiction.
Relating to the period of time of Elizabeth I of England.
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