• Literal meaning:
  • Figurative meanings
  • Important words:
    • Key oppositions
     
     
    To His Coy Mistress
    NB: it isn't "my" coy mistress, but His...

    Had we but World enough, and Time.
    This coyness Lady were no crime.
    Tense--subjunctive tense...
    "coy" -- shy but also playing games
    We would sit down, and think which way
    To walk, and pass our long Loves Day.
    What we'd do if we had all this time and space...
    Thou by the Indian Ganges side
    Should'st Rubies find: I by the Tide
    Of Humber would complain. I would
    You could sit by a river in India, while I sat by one here in England-- you could look for rubies while I recited poems about how much I love you.   Other connotations-- she would be rich in her isolation, while he would be lonely and singing sad songs.
    Love you ten years before the Flood:
    And you should if you please refuse
    Till the Conversion of the Jews.
    I would sing about how I have been loving you since before the flood, and you could say no until the end of time (apocalypse).  Spatial expansion
    My vegetable Love should grow
    Vaster than Empires, and more slow.
    vegetable means organic, natural, vtal, living growing.  nurturing-- he is tending it like a garden. Continues hyperboles.  Back to spatial metaphors...Beginning synthesis of space and time
    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.
    Pretty conventional set of compliments,  Petrarch... blazon" --  poetical catalogue of a women's admirable physical features.   5 lines talk about the body; only one about what is inside..  Irony in so quantifying her parts..ALso note how he moves down the body...
    For Lady you deserve this State;
    Nor would I love at lower rate.
    He is saying you deserve to have me totally focussed on you.   lower rate picks up issue of payment etc. again.

    Stanza I
    CRUCIAL OPPOSITIONS??  Are there any oppostions/ tensions/ ironies in this part of the poem or it is in  oppostion to the next section?
    Blazon vs. complaint; time vs. space
     


    But at my back I alwaies hear
    Times winged Charriot hurrying near:
    And yonder all before us lye
    Desarts of vast Eternity.
    time is approaching quickly.. winged charioit is kind of angelic....  Apollos chariot. Approach of death.   Here time has contracted down to a single. mechanical object....Big tonal shift away from the  subjunctive possibilities of stanza one to an urgency based in the present. Opp btw the fertlity of the first stanza (vegetable love) and this desert. -- both of which are "vast."
    Allusions-- chariot is Ovid-- time the devourer (tempus edax rerum)
    Thy Beauty shall no more be found;
    Nor, in thy marble Vault, shall sound
    My echoing Song:
    She's gonna die. Marble vault is double-- literal is her tomb: you won't hear me singing in your tomb.  But there is also a sexual connotation here.. with the marble vault being her body that he won't have entered. Picks up on "praise" and "complain" of previous stanza

    then Worms shall try
    That long preserv'd Virginity:
    You are going to lose it one way or anyother, and the worms are a lot nastier than me.  I begin to ask who is the audience for this poem? Here he is exposing again the artificiality of the tradtional poetic forms; this is nothing like usual carpe diem poems, which tend to be light-hearted and non-specific.
    And your quaint Honour turn to dust;
    And into ashes all my Lust.
    "quaint" come from olde English and refers to a French word that means purse-- both references to women's anatomy.

    The Grave's a fine and private place,
    But none I think do there embrace.

    Stanza II
    CRUCIAL OPPOSITIONS??
    Between Stanza I and II: I is literary and witty; II is more earthy and immediate.  I is Petrarchan; II is carpe diem. Movement from spiritual to physical..
    In Stanza 2:
     


    Now therefore, while the youthful hew
    Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
    Shift to present tense is made more insistent by the enjambment of  "now"
    And while thy willing Soul transpires
    At every pore with instant Fires,
    Shift from morning and youth to fire-- echoes structure of poem so far
    She's heating up.. impliation that she is beingpersuaded, or that her coyness was just a mask and that she wants it as much as he does.

    Now let us sport us while we may;
    And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
    Shift to activity and shift back to first person plural (WE)
    Rather at once our Time devour,
    Than languish in his slow-chapt pow'r
    Shift from time being in charge of the lovers to their being able to dominate time.
    Images of eating and consuming.  Usually you get references to love birds.. But here it is birds of prey.

    Let us roll all our Strength, and all
    Our sweetness, up into one Ball:
    Eagles look like a big wheel-- maybe carry over  from birds of prey?  Image of unification and of concentration
    And tear our Pleasures with rough strife.
    Through the Iron gates of Life.
    Connects back to  "sport" and birds of prey Almost an egalitarian sense here of the two of them fighting. Throwing off conventions. Iron Gates-- it's as if they weren't living before and so sex will be like a birth into a new life.  Another potential vaginal image.  It is kind of negative-- tear and iron gates..  Mybe gates are iron because they are entering world of sin.  If you allow time to trap you you will be imprisoned, as good as dead, so have to fight through the gate.   Al
    Thus, though we cannot make our Sun
    Stand still, yet we will make him run.
    S Come full circle.. Instead of wanting more time to sit around as in beginning of the poem, now the urge is to run.. to make the most f time.. even to outrun time.