“To His Coy Mistress” is a seduction poem in which the speaker makes a carefully constructed argument meant to convince his mistress to have sex with him. The speaker’s argument unfolds across three stanzas, and it begins with what modern readers might call a thought experiment. The first stanza opens with a hypothetical vision of the leisurely romance he and his mistress could enjoy if they had unlimited time. This stanza implies that the source of his mistress’s coyness is, apparently, that she simply doesn’t want to rush their physical relationship. The second stanza makes a significant logical shift in the argument, turning from idealized images of courtship to a graphic depiction of aging and death. In this stanza, the speaker uses disturbing imagery to demonstrate the negative consequences of his mistress’s reluctance. By providing a graphic example of what might happen should they delay their lovemaking, the speaker hopes to inspire his mistress to action. After establishing the faulty premise of his mistress’s coyness, the speaker uses the third stanza to explicitly introduce the conclusion that—for him at least—follows logically from the first two stanzas. That is, they should make love now, while they still can.