"To His Coy Mistress"

A detailed Summary of "To His Coy Mistress"

One must analyze tone, metaphor, diction, imagery and alliteration to understand the meaning of,

"To His Coy Mistress." Andrew Marvell uses all five tools to convey just how much passion the speaker

has for his mistress, Marvell uses all five tools in very tactful ways to convey his meaning.

To fully understand "To his Coy Mistress," one must understand what the tone of the poem is. Yet

to be clear there is no overlaying tone, there are three within the poem. Starting with the first section of the

poem the speaker begins to flatter his mistress, he flatters her to an almost outrageous extent, "An hundred

years should go to praise / Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze; / Two hundred to adore each breast, / But

thirty thousand to the rest" (Lines: 13-16). His tone seems to coax and cajole his mistress. One can find that

he may be overdoing it when he promises to adore each part of her for an outrageous amount of time. Not

to mention he promises to adore each breast twice as long as her eyes. The tone found in the second section

is in sharp contrast to section one. His tone becomes sincere, he speaks of death and limited time, "And

your quaint honor turn to dust, / And into ashes all my lu

Ganges" (Line5). The imagery used in section one reminds one of eternity, but that imagery abruptly stops

her. It is shown that he wants to live in the moment, that he realizes that they may not have tomorrow. And

Approximate Word count = 973
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English

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