The poem “To his Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell reminds me of the Dylan Thomas poem “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.” Both poems use words like ‘burn,’ ‘rage,’ and ‘fires,’ which bring up strong emotions in readers. When I read Thomas’s poem, it meant to me that someone about to die shouldn’t go down easy, rather they should go down swinging. Just as the Thomas poem says to me that people should try to live even their last moments of life to the fullest, this Marvell poem says something very similar to me—that people should try to live every moment to the fullest, with no regrets.
I like how Marvell starts out his poem with a kind of easy-going tone, lulling the reader with the message, ‘If we had all of the time in the world.’ Then, suddenly, in the last two stanzas of the poem, he changes from a calm tone to a sense of urgency. I thought this transition was moving, and I think Marvell may have intended on ‘setting up’ the reader like that to get jolted into action. If the response Marvell hoped to get from his readers was to be inspired to live life to the fullest, he accomplished it—with me, at least.
Marvell chooses stirring words and phrases that amplify the responses in readers. His phrase at the end of the poem, “And tear our pleasures with rough strife/Thorough the iron gates of life,” made me think of people just having the time of their lives and not wasting time worrying about what other people think (“To his Coy Mistress”). It is phrases like these that make Marvell’s “To his Coy Mistress” one of my favorite poems.
