Marvell, Sidney and Spenser: Love and Poetry

The speaker says that if they had more time the “coyness” of the mistress would not be a crime. In the first stanza he describes how he would love her when they had more time, he would admire her and focus on each part of her body until he would get to her heart. Heart here is a metaphor for sex and love. The second stanza focuses on the “but”, they have no time and they will die because life is short and death is forever, the third stanza then focuses on the “now” and the “therefore”, because loving each other with passion, they should both make the most of the brief time they have left.
From the three poems this third is the odd one, at least in a sense of complication and form. Although I would say that Astrophel and Stella is also a persuasion poem, the message in it is more hidden as in To His Coy Mistress the message and the persuasion is widely explained. Also it is a metaphysical poem, with all the defeating time with making love, the aim of the first two poems were not sex, but the presence and the meaning of love. Marvell described the topic more bravely and openly, when Spenser and Sidney kept the more sentimental sonnet style to their poems.
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