To His Coy Mistress: Literary Context

Metaphysical Poetry

In 1779, the famous literary critic Samuel Johnson coined the term “metaphysical poetry” to describe the verses of a small number of seventeenth-century poets such as John Donne, George Herbert, and Andrew Marvell. Generally speaking, the word metaphysical refers to a type of philosophical thinking that is characterized by the use of abstract reasoning. When Johnson described certain examples of poetry as metaphysical, he wanted to underscore their tendency toward philosophical abstraction. For him, though, abstraction was a bad thing. He felt that metaphysical poets developed unnecessarily elaborate conceits and unsolvable paradoxes. What resulted was dense and intellectual verse that demonstrated the poet’s wit more than it pleased the reader. Despite Johnson’s personal distaste for it, metaphysical poetry made a significant comeback in the early twentieth century, largely due to an enthusiastic reception from famous poets like T. S. Eliot. Today, many scholars celebrate Andrew Marvell as one of the seventeenth century’s finest metaphysical poets, and the ambitiously constructed conceits of “To His Coy Mistress” show why. Marvell contrasts a wild fantasy of infinite time against startling images of worm-eaten corpses. This unusual juxtaposition creates a complex link between sex and death that is both humorous and emotionally affecting.

Carpe Diem Poems

Carpe diem is a Latin phrase that means “seize the day,” and there is a long tradition of poetry that adopts this sentiment as a central theme. The lineage of carpe diem poems stretches back to Horace, a Roman poet who lived in the first century BCE. Horace concludes one of his odes with the line, “seize the day, trusting as little as possible in tomorrow.” This call to take advantage of the present has been a staple trope in poetry from Horace’s time to our own. Indeed, many of the best-known lines of poetry happen to come from carpe diem poems. Consider, for instance, the famous line “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,” which open Robert Herrick’s 1648 poem, “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time.” This line recently reentered the popular imagination through the 1989 American film, Dead Poets Society, which itself heavily underscored the theme of seizing the day. Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” provides a classic example of a carpe diem poem. The speaker tries hard to convince his mistress that old age and death are just around the corner, and because of this they should seize the moment and make love without delay.