"To His Coy Mistress"- Motif

"To His Coy Mistress"
by Andrew Marvell

The speaker of the poem is a young man who loves a young woman and is speaking about how much time they have.  Time is the motif in this poem, as it referenced many times and the change in mood/tone of the poem is based on a different perception of time.  The first half of the poem talks about what the speaker would do if he had, basically, all the time in the world.  He exaggerates, saying than a "hundred years should go to praise thine eyes...two hundred to adore each breast" (Marvell, 803).  The speaker says that if he and the women were immortal, and youth was eternal, he could spend centuries admiring her beauty and waiting for her to return his love.  As romantic as this sounds, the tone soon changes when the speaker is honest and bluntly says that, unfortunately, the lovers do not have all the time in the world.  "But at my back I always hear time's winged chariot hurrying near" (804).  Because they do not have much time, and both beauty and youth dwindle quickly, the speaker suggests that the lovers enjoy the moment, and enjoy each other now, before they are too old.  He uses the fear of time, or time running out, to possibly convince the woman that they should, "like amorous birds of prey...at once our time devour" (804).