To His Coy Mistress

    I have read Marvell's poem before and honestly I didn't get it the first time, then I put on my literary eyes and read for more meaning and it was like a completely different poem. I really can see Marevell's argument though, coyness and flirting is great if you have the luxury of time to engage in it. Being a metaphysical poem, the physical and the spiritual are brought up and time being a physical and earthly drain is the central motivation for why they should not wait to be together and that time will only bring age and dwindle her beauty.
   One of my favorite lines of the poem is when Marvel compares the man's love to vegetable love and says that "My vegetable love should grow Vaster than empires". In Marevell's time vegetable love meant the lowest kind of love, like love between peasants. His saying that it will start there, on the most basic level and grow to be vaster than empires seems to imply that he will love her from the bottom of the spectrum to the top of it and everywhere in-between. This is actually a sweet sentiment, as is much of the poem, Marvell is expressing love on every level from lust to true romance. Time is a main conceit of this poem, and that if he has eternity he would admire the young beauty for hundreds and thousands of years, but alas they are only human and that means mortality will unfortunately come between that lofty desire. It is the lingering question that still faces us today, you only have one life to live so why wait? 
    Many metaphysical poems address the issues of time and how mortality is the real hindrance at life achievement but that there is an entirely different spiritual world in which people can operate and be better that they were in their current life. No other metaphysical pots, in my opinion however, does such a persuasive job as Marvell in the presentations of his regiments for why the young girl should just give into him. Through metaphor, and jarring imagery Marvell complies a series of valid arguments that leave me wondering did it work on the girl he was seducing? And to me a good piece of literature always leaves me with a few lingering questions.