To_His_Coy_Mistress

To His Coy Mistress At first glance, Andrew Marvell’s poem “To His Coy Mistress” is a fairly typical carpe diem poem, in which the speaker tells his beloved that they should “seize the day” and have sex now instead of waiting until they are married (Meyer 728). In today’s world, the speaker’s speech may seem sexist in its attitude toward women and irresponsible in its attitude toward the coy mistress; however the speaker does not explain how he would seize the day if the woman became pregnant. Still, if we look beyond the limited perspective of the speaker himself, we can see that Marvell is making a statement. He implies how all of us, regardless of gender or involvement in relationships, should savor the pleasures of the moment. The mistress would like to postpone sex, at least until she and the speaker are married; however, the speaker wants to consummate their physical relationship now. Each viewpoint has its reasons, and certainly the woman in the poem would stand to lose sensibly from premarital sex. Marvell, however, is not suggesting that unrestrained lust is preferable to moral or ethical restraint; sex is only the subject matter, not the coy, mistress, poem, rhyme, speaker, meter, irregularities, should, rhythm, time, line, theme, sex, pattern, moment, lines, however, future, couplet, suggests, present, poet, now, moral, marvell, life, irregularity, irregular, instead, eternity, each, conventional, actually, woman, while, virginity