TIME:
Marvell's conception of time is ever changing in "To His Coy Mistress", but this is only to be excepted in a poem that seeks to convince by constructing an ideal and proceeding to demonstrate its utopian nature. In the world of would and should that we are immersed in before the pivotial "BUT" in the second stanza, Marvell presents an idyllc view of lovers engaged in a slow wlatz that stretches on for centuries.
We find Marvell now occupying the role of a prahmatist. He has become on who is aware of his mortality and of the advance of time. Time now becomes an enemy to be feared, an enemy who is closing down on us, and the eternity that he earlier facilated and requisite offerin to his mistress now becomes a vast desert. It is ironic that to understand "desert of vast eternity" we call on that very conception of the monotonous which we have failed to apply where it would be most apt.
Andrew Marvell College - Aerial Photos February 21...
Andrew Marvell College - Aerial Photos February 21...
Andrew Marvell College - Aerial Photos February 21...it would seem that a lover, would tire of spending "two hundred years "to adore each breast. The same would be expected of a woman subjected to such unending praise, a love song that keeps repeating itself will soon wear out both singer and listener. Yet we do not stop to reflect on this alternate view while reading the first stanza. Rather, we are not permitted to reflect on this aspect since the poem keeps us hering us along , presenting one image after another in mind-numbing succession. Though Marvell is ostensibly describing something that is drawn out in time , for the reader it proceeds at a pace that does not allow for reflection. As one fantastic claim follows another , we can not stop to think where they are leadng...