"To His Coy Mistress" is a poem of seduction written by Andrew Marvell in 1641. A more fitting title may have been "To Coy His Mistress." The language used needs a bit of deciphering in this day and age, but the meaning is well focused. Marvell uses the concerns of time constantly to try and create a convincing effect to get his way with his mistress. In the three verses of the poem, Marvell goes from his impression of the past into the death-defying future in order to convey the need for action in the present. The pattern of Marvell's poem is roughly this: If there were enough time, the speaker would continue on courting his mistress forever, but time is disappearing fast. So they must take advantage of the moments they currently have and express their love for one another before death comes to claim them; there is no time to be coy.
             Had the speaker "but world enough and time", he would seduce and flirt with his mistress forever (1). This fantasy world Marvell creates treats time like a slow waltz in which the speaker admits his love for the mistress for eons and takes his time in admiring each portion of her body for a long number of years. But then, as if predicting the importance of the next section of the poem, the speaker breaks off his list of her features and quickly gives "thirty thousand to the rest"(16). Because of the condition the speaker is in, centuries seem to pass by in minutes for him; why else would one devote "an hundred years...to praise thine eyes" and "two hundred to adore each breast"(13-15)? These exaggerations greatly embellish time for greater effect in the speaker's love for the mistress, saying that he would "love [her] ten years before the Flood...till the conversion of the Jews"(7-10). The period between these two events cover an enormous amount of time. The speaker also says that his &
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