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An
Expectant Seduction
Andrew Marvell’s, “To His Coy Mistress”, seizes the reader with
more than a conception. Marvell
has your motor racing with the meaning and the movement of the words, while he
enlightens us with his offer of sexual intercourse. He succeeds and fails within this poem to capture the
audience and express his point.
In
the first strophe we see his initial failure.
This stanza can be described as flat resembling other seventeenth
century poems. His uncommon
rhythm in line two and his use of the word ‘vegetable’ as a stage of his
love, is unpopular with me. Interest
shuts off when you portray your love as produce.
Produce is not alive and neither is his tone. I think it is a coincidence that he uses this word.
In no way is he trying to make you think of Aristotle’s primitive and
slow to move translations. He used this word not aware of the notion.
Critically, his mistake gave him credit for being brilliant by using
Aristotle’s mind. In the second
strophe in the lines, ‘And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast
eternity’, I am forced to see this mistress as alone, the scare tactic makes
the mistress believe that she has to be with either him or no one.
The word desert brings to mind the words, isolation and dreadful…is
this where he wants to take her? In
the third strophe he suggests them to ‘sport us while we may’.
The usage of sport makes his seduction sound like a game.
He thinks he is going to get a homerun, but I know his mistress has a
strikeout up her sleeve because his offer is not convincing.
In
line 38, ‘And now, like am’rous birds of prey’, the word choice here is
poor. Out of context ‘birds of
prey’ sounds yet again fatal and noxious.
This mistress is not going to sleep with a man who is comparable to
death and lackluster. For her
sake, he first needs to be pleasurable and exciting because she will always
remember this. Starting with line
43, ‘And tear our pleasures with rough strife Thorough the iron gates of
life.’, I am disgusted with his metaphor of the vagina.
I see these iron gates as a very cherished goal or of some kind of
exclusive achievement. Iron gates
also sounds hard to go through and with a virgin they are.
The speaker is suggesting he possess the key. To tell a woman that he is the only one who can release her
is a very grave move.
Marvell,
on another level, succeeds through his seducing offer.
At the beginning of each strophe you experience an explosion of
movement and at the almost common tetrameter lines, we see two ways of
persuading explanation. In the
second strophe his thoughts are sped up by the easily read words.
In the lines ‘But at my back I always hear Time’s winged chariot
hurrying near;’ these words just fall off your tongue.
His usage of the word ‘quaint’ tries to appeal to his woman.
This word is feminine and shows that he is educated.
“Sits in thy skin like morning dew, And while thy willing soul
transpires’, is very erotic. He
has my heart racing waiting for his climax because I think of hot and sweaty
bodies on top of one another. I
like his phrasing “Let us roll our strength, and all Our sweetness, up into
one ball’, because he is so rapped up in his seduction he is reluctant to
see he still has to try to win his mate.
In reading these final lines, I feel my adrenaline rise and an
impatient atmosphere fall. Andrew Marvell utilizes the speaker as a manipulator.
I do not want him to succeed because he is pursuing her for his own
delight. If his coy mistress does
sleep with him, she will find out how much he inflated himself.
In the end, the speaker is breathless and ready to endure his subject
thus achieving his enticing purpose of seduction.
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