Rana
To Pooja His Coy Mistress TPCASTT
Title:
The title of this poem indicates that the writer is addresses the shy women that he is having an
affair with.
Paraphrase:
Had we but world enough, and time,
The coyness, lady, were no crime.
If there was enough time and space, coyness wouldnt be a crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long loves day.
If they had all the time and space they wanted, they could consider where they might go next,
while aimlessly strolling and resting whenever they pleased.
Thou by the Indian Ganges side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain.
She could hang out on the bank of the Ganges and find rubies. He would be across the world at
the Humber, complaining.
I would
Love you ten years before the flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
He would go back in time to Noah and the Flood, and forward in time to the conversion of the
Jews, all the while loving her.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow;
He describes love without the pressure of anything but nature, a natural process resulting in
something nourishing, like vegetables. He could also be referring to male anatomy when talking
about vegetable love.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eye, and on thy forward gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
He says that if he had time, he would give her compliments about each of her body parts, and he
would spend thousands of years doing it.
And the last age should show your heart.
Then, after all the complimenting, she would show him her heart, or, in other words, have sex
with him.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
He says that shes worth it and he wouldnt give her anything less than first-class love.
But at my back I always hear
Times winged chariot hurrying near;
But he is running out of time.
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Pooja Rana
He tells the mistress to look at this sand. The future is just endless sand and we are all going to
die.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
And, there, she will not look too pretty.
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
She wont be able to hear his pretty song when she is dead in a grave underground.
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,
He tells her that in her grave, worms will have sex with her. In this line, she is a virgin.
And your quaint honor turn to dust,
He says that she cant take her virginity with her into the afterlife, and makes jokes about her
vagina.
And into ashes all my lust:
He implies that if he cant sex with her, he wont have sex at all.
The graves a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
He tells her that coffins are great. They have lots of privacy, but no hugging.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
He suggests that his argument is successful, and that he is about to tell the mistress what she
should do.
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
He tells her how young she is, and how her soul rushes around excitedly inside her, leaking
through her pores.
Now let us sport us while we may,
He says that they should play some games.
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
He suggests that they should pretend to be birds of prey and mate.
Rather at once out time devour
He says that before they start, they should take the time to take in their time together.
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
He feels he like is dying in Times mouth, and that time is slowly eating him up. He wants to turn
the tables and thinks that sex is the way to get time under his control.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
Describes sex.
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
He claims to believe that sex is the way to another world, a way to break out of prison of time.
This also suggests that he thinks that bringing the strife of like into the bedroom will enhance the
sexual experience.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
Pooja Rana
In this time period, the sun was though to control time. He admits that sex is a compromise. They
cannot use it to stop time, but they can use it to make time go faster. If they make time run, it
wont have time to kill people.
Connotation:
In lines 3-4, the speaker uses hyperbole to suggest various speeds of motion and even stillness.
"Picking rubies" implies a somewhat leisurely action. In lines 8-10, the speakers declaration that
he would love her "ten years before the flood" and "till the conversion of the Jews" combines
hyperbole and allusion to create motion, in this case a sense of rapid movement through time. He
also uses the grand, Biblical language ironically to poke fun at the mistress, whom he accuses of
wanting something timeless, while saying in the same breath that he would give this to her, too,
if he has time. This might create the motion of the mistress running away from the speaker. In
lines 18-19, the speaker uses "show your heart" as a metaphor for the mistresss imagined
agreement to finally have sex with him, implying faster action, and possibly a faster heartbeat.
But, to emphasize the theme of mock leisure in this stanza, he slows things down by using the
word "show," which rhymes with the "slow" of a previous line. In line 20, he then extends the
"heart" metaphor in line 20 by introducing the word rate as in heart rate, another kind of
motion. We cant neglect the sense of "rate" which means "price" or "cost." With this pun, he
slyly accuses her of wanting to sell her love for compliments which brings us back to the
running away thing. In lines 45-46, the final lines of the poem employ a variety of fun
techniques. The simple imagery of the word "sun," which makes us see yellow or orange or red
as we read, combines with personification to deepen the image. We see a red-orange blur,
wearing fiery running shoes. As you might suspect, Marvells ending flourish is even more
sophisticated. The sun is also a metaphor for time. Time is an abstract concept. By giving an
abstract concept, human characteristics, the speaker personifies an abstraction, and we are left
with an image of a bizarre red-orange clock wearing tennis shoes, trying to stay as far away from
the speaker as possible.
Attitude:
The speaker is anonymous. He is speaking to his mistress, trying to get her to sleep with him.
Shift:
There is a shift of freedom and confinement. The poem can feel claustrophobic at some
moments, but, at other moments, we feel all our confines crumble.
Title:
I changed my mind. The title now indicates a complicated relationship and complicated
communications between our speaker and his mistress.
Theme:
Time is a super-villain out to get us all. Sex is the super power needed to destroy the enemy.
Dying is the ultimate lack of control. We need to examine the freedoms and confinements of our
own lives.