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To His Coy Mistress

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Submitted By maybelcuadrante
Words 2156
Pages 9
English 109
Literary Criticism
O.P. 1

Name: CUADRANTE, Maybel C. Date: July 27, 2015
Year & Section: III – English

To His Coy Mistress Classic literature is indeed difficult to understand and interpret. You really need to read it more than ten times just to get the thought of the whole text. This poem To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell is indeed difficult to understand. I really had a hard time comprehending its whole text and to get its point and message. I also searched on its modern English translation to fully understand its message and for me to have this occasional paper. As I’ve continuously read the poem I’ve got some points that leads me into clues on what is it all about. This occasional paper is written based on my own understanding, interpretation and by the use of the four approaches- the historical-biographical and moral-philosophical approach. For me to have a better understanding about the poem and for me to use the four approaches, I looked for some information and the references are indicated at the last page of my paper. Andrew Marvell was a metaphysical poet usually focused on love and relationship with God. During the sixteenth and seventeenth century, the commonly used themes or motifs of literary pieces are about love, religion and the so-called Latin term carpe diem which means “seize the day”. Before we go on with the four approaches, let us first look into the text. So the literary piece is a lyric poem written in iambic tetrameter. The speaker is probably a young boy who is very passionate with his love to his “mistress”. I can say that he is a young boy in a way that he only wants to do all the things that they want to do and they must enjoy every moment passed by and they should not waste time because time is in a hurry, like in this lines:
Had we but world enough, and time,
We would sit down and

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