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
Themes in To his Coy Mistress
The rush of time
The main theme of To his Coy Mistress is The Transience of Life, expressed through a sense of time pursuing us and propelling us into the grave before we have achieved fulfilment. Marvell's tempo and language become more and more urgent as the poem proceeds. The poet is prepared to fight rather more vigorously than his Elizabethan predecessors, however. Something can be won back from time, but it has to be seized by sheer will power.
The constraints of reality
At times, the theme of love's destructiveness is hinted at. The Petrarchan ideal of idealising the mistress is not only mocked, but seen as destructive, in that it achieves nothing, given the constraints of reality. A timeless courtship ultimately becomes a deadly one.
Borrowed time
Donne's favourite theme of the completeness of the lovers' world is here modified. The lovers cannot make a world of time and space for themselves in the traditional sense of lovemaking. Only in the intensity of their passion can they force time (and space) to obey them, and then for how long?
- Pick out words and phrases in To his Coy Mistress that suggest the poet's passion, and struggle against time
- Do people today still have a sense of transience and the shortness of life?
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