Free to his coy mistress essay example

English

“ Poetry is a literary genre that although may sometimes be difficult to grasp, when taken the time to analyze and understand, is able to lead the reader through endless paths of enlightenment. Poetry is derived from the Greek word poiesis means ” making”. Poetry is a form of literary art which uses aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meanings or emotions if the individual.
History of poetry is long and dates back to the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh . Early poems were evolved from folk songs such as the Chinese Shijing, or from a need to retell oral epics, as with the Sanskrit Vedas, and the Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey. The most famous poets of the century are Robert Frost, Andrew Marvell’s, William Shakespeare, Pablo Neruda, Langston Hughes, Oscar Wilde, and Emily Dickinson

About the Poet

Andrew Marvell was a politician and a metaphysical poet was born on March21, 1621. He was colleague of John Milton and is associated with John Donne and George Herbert. His most notable works include, “ to his coy mistress”, The Garden, The Horatian Ode, The Mowers song. According to a biographer: ” Skilled in the arts of self-preservation, he was not a toady.”[ . Andrew Marvell is one of the most noted and celebrated poet or metaphysical poet of the era and embodiment of change.

Personal Interest

Poetry can transcend the mundane and unleashes the emotions hidden in sub conscious mind and infuses in the poet clarity of vision and better understanding of unexpressed emotions. In comparison to prose, poetry can be comprehended with your own perspective and can relate to the characters or emotions expressed in the poem . So poetry are inevitable part of literature.

Literary Genre Analysis – To his coy mistress

The speaker of Andrew Marvell’s poem,” to his coy mistress” addresses to the women who is slow in responses to his sexual advancements and uses exaggerated metaphors to seduce his mistress. It is a provocative poem and encompasses many literary techniques like Personification, Metaphors, Imagery, Alliteration, Enjambment, Irony and Similes. Through his verbal mastery, Marvell manipulates his female subject. Even though love is only real when unattainable, “ to his coy mistress”, is a beautiful expression of the theme, ” carpe diem” because invokes petrarchan convention and defies tradition of unrequited love.
The imagery is insincere, though it is romantic and idealistic but the time period given to accept or consider his proposition is completely unrealistic. But the speaker is realistic at heart and is well aware of their brief time on earth, hence rather than respectful adulation gives lustful invitation to his lady love and assumes sexual dominion over his mistress rather than outright rejection. There is a shift in his tone where he points out that her beauty will last only for short time. There is a drastic shift in the language of praise to threat, from lust to disgust where he identifies human body as loathsome symbol of decay. Marvell tries to persuade her by saying that she will be dead for long and in her tomb she will not be able to hear he loves her and the worms in the tomb will take away her long preserved virginity and no one will embrace her on tomb. Though this rhetoric is harsh but the speaker craftily uses it to scare his mistress and make her surrender in his arms. The speaker mocks contemporary notions of virginity and says her beauty will decay sooner as beauty is temporary and with time vanish. He uses oxymoron and negates honor by using quant.
Although the poem has strictly regulated pace but in the final section, the speed changes into increased tempo and confuses audience with a ballad and continues to add sensual connotations of the argument. In his last plea he shakes up the dark area of death to his mistress beauty and urges her while she is still young and beautiful and her every ore of body sets fire, she should not waste her passion and surrender herself. In the last four lines of the poem, the speaker becomes desperate and says to his mistress, that she should be supportive and erotically persuades her to seize the moment, gather up all the energy and cuddle each other like love birds. In the final couplet, the speaker defines life as hard as iron and tough and only some pleasures of intimacy can make life worthwhile. Imagery of sun is most interesting in final lines where he means, though man has no control on time and space but by making optimum utilization of time we can make out time for adventurous things and make life worth living.

Conclusion

Marvell craftily with his exaggerated metaphors invokes petrarchan conventions and defies contemporary notions of love and intimacy. The poem is much of his celebration of rhetorical mastery as it is of his physical conquest. He attempts to woo his beloved lady with his verbal prowess. Treating female as his subject, he manipulates her by overly praising her beauty and how her beauty aroused in him sexual desires and imagines his mistress as a destructive force to be harnessed. His final description of intimacy or coitus is disturbing as it triumphant violent indictment of the female subject.