Composition

In order to better analyse “To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell, it is necessary to focus on its outer composition (stanzas, verses and graphical expression) and inner composition (beginning, subdivision and course).

Outer composition

“To His Coy Mistress” is a poem of 46 lines. In your textbook, the poem appears as divided into three stanzas. The poem is written in iambic tetrameter, which means that a line is comprised of four iambs. The poem also rhymes in couplets; this is but one example:

“Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime.” (ll. 1-2)

The poem is an address to the woman whom the poet loves. As you are about to see, the poem is, in fact, an allusion to sexual love.

Inner composition

Each of the three stanzas represents a certain stage of life.

Stanza 1 depicts the numerous ways in which a man would love his woman if there were “world enough and time” (l. 1). The metaphors...