To His Coy Mistress

Have you read the poem ‘To His Coy Mistress’? To His Coy Mistress was written by Andrew Marvell between his birth in 1621 and his death in 1678. The poem expresses how a man’s passion and lust can propel his mistress hunt without exerting any limits to flirting, strategizing, scheming, praising, devising and lying until the prey is trapped. It is an amazing universal trait of the male species that has been captured in the poem better than in any other text.

The starting lines of the poem, ‘Had we but world enough, and time, this coyness, lady, were no crime’ reveals to us that the persona of the poem is an old gentleman whose object of praise was a younger woman. The woman is coy to the approaches of the older man. However, the older man wants to get things moving without the time wasting formalities. To achieve this fast-tracked success with the lady, the gentleman knows exactly what to do. Watch out and see what man’s passion and lust can make him do or say.

True to the principles of a man’s strategic hunt for a mistress, he knows that by flirting and pledging love he would get the young woman interested. Although what he wants is precise from the first moment (he wants things to get going fast, remember?), he chooses to first pretend. He says that he is willing to wait for the lady to make a decision.

‘Of Humber would complain, I would,

Love you ten years before the flood,

And you should, if you please, refuse

Till the conversion of the Jews’

He is willing to wait, he says, until the conversion of the Jews, pledging to love her even if it takes ten years for her to make her decision. The above lines refer to the flood of Noah’s time as detailed in the Bible’s book of Genesis. Simply, he is pledging a willingness to wait for her with an undying love for an indefinite length. Jews never convert to other religions or so it has been believed since time immemorial. They will only be converted just before Armageddon.  Therefore, by putting the time limit of his love to the conversion of the Jews, he is exaggerating the length to which his love will last. Remember that we know from the first line that he is impatiently willing to get over the formalities and into the real business. So why is he lying now? Call it the mistress hunt.

He is letting the lady know that he is willing to love and praise her beauty for a very long, long time before ever considering sexual intercourse. Nevertheless, liars are easy to catch since they are always contradicting themselves. After pledging such an infinite love and patience, he then goes on and describes his love as a ‘vegetable love’. How long do vegetables last?

‘My vegetable love should grow

Vaster than empires, and more slow’

Call it a man’s passion and lust. He is in a way promising that although their love is young now (probably they have just met) he is willing to pursue deeper, vast love gradually. This is definitely aimed at winning the trust of the lady typical in any mistress hunt. This guy has devoted himself to the loving business, or so it seems from the praises and promises he is making. But do you trust him? If you are a woman there is a chance that you do. If you are a man you know the game. So after earning the trust of the lady what is the next step? A man’s strategic hunt for a mistress according to the gentleman in the poem should then proceed to disarming the lady with praise. Listen to this:

‘An hundred years should go to praise

Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;

Two hundred to adore each breast,

But thirty thousand to the rest;

An age at least to every part,

And the last age should show your heart’

That is perfection of flattery. It is perfection of the wooing game during a mistress hunt. This man seems to have known not only how to praise but what to praise. What do you think the woman is feeling if her one breast is worth two hundred years of praise? Her back incidentally is worth thirty thousand years of praise. This guy knows the game inside out. The woman is defenseless now; she has completely lowered if not lost her guard. So how does the gentleman progress with his mission?

‘For, lady, you deserve this state,

Nor would I love at lower rate.’

Simply said, ‘I swear to love just as much as you deserve in beauty. I promise honey, I will love you more than anything else in my life’. Does it sound familiar? Besides that, the man is promising to provide for her according to her worth in beauty, if not to sexually satisfy her – typical of a man’s strategic hunt for a mistress.

Then comes the most dramatic part of the poem. This man now shows his true colors. He is really in need of this woman. He swears by everything possible and or available, if only he be granted sexual fulfillment there and then. He uses all means and ways to get the lady conquered and as a reward his promises will hold. The condition set for all the promises to be fulfilled is sex. It is a here and now request or as he puts it, ‘Now, therefore, while the youthful hue’.

Look at these lines and see a man’s passion and lust redefined:

‘But at my back I always hear

Time’s winged chariot hurrying near;

And yonder all before us lie

Deserts of vast eternity.

Thy beauty shall no more be found,

Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound

My echoing song: then worms shall try

That long-preserved virginity,

And you quaint honor turn to dust,

And into ashes all my lust:

The grave’s a fine and private place,

But none, I think, do there embrace.

Now, therefore, while the youthful hue

Sits on thy skin like morning dew,

And while thy willing soul transpires

At every pore with instant fires,

Now let us sport us while we may,

And now, like amorous birds of prey,

Rather at once our time devour,

Than languish in his slow-chapt power.

Let us roll all our strength and all

Our sweetness up into one ball,

And tear our pleasures with rough strife

Thorough the iron gates of life:

Thus, though we cannot make our sun

Stand still, yet we will make him run.’

For all it is worth this man craves for this woman. His central focus is nothing else but sexual passion. He just cannot wait. So he begs, he praises, he urges. A man’s strategic hunt for a mistress follows these exact steps. During a mistress hunt, a man tries every trick to make her consent and not to postpone sexual union. He’s eloquent enough to show the woman that they are losing time and they do not have much of that. To His Coy Mistress was written by Andrew Marvel as a graphic display of his epicurean philosophy. He paints true a man’s passion and lust.

To His Coy Mistress’ basic theme is announced at the beginning. That is man’s strategic hunt for a mistress. He wants the woman to see time as a waste of youth. This will make the woman to agree and enjoy her youth now and not any other time. Hopefully, she will enjoy it with the man who has just sworn real love.

Tags: thy marble vault, thy forehead gaze, His Coy Mistress, Mistress, mistres