Language and style

In what follows, we will address the language and the style of the poem “To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell. This will help you better understand the poem and the way the poet intended to use specific elements and techniques.

Playing with language

As you have already seen, the poem “To His Coy Mistress” abounds in stylistic elements and figures of speech. It is, then, safe to say that the poet plays with language.

The first hint that the poet plays with language is in the title of the poem. The possessive pronoun “his” initially confuses the reader. The first impression is that the poet makes an invitation to another man’s lover. This is ambiguous at first, as we do not know from the title that the poet has no intention of intervening between a man and a woman. Instead, the poet adopts the perspective of a young man and voices his desires. He becomes, thus, a device, not a character in the poem.

There are several other ways in which the poet plays with language through stylistic elements, which we will present in the dedicated section.

Tense of the verbs

The poem opens with the conditional tense, which suggests that coyness would b...