Theme of Love in The Definition of Love and To His Coy Mistress. (Comparative study)

Theme of Love in The Definition of Love and To His Coy Mistress. (Comparative study)


"The Definition of Love" and "To His Coy Mistress" are two of the most celebrated poems of Andrew Marvell where he presents the idea of love in a most excellent manner and draws the two states of love which are spiritual and physical respectively. In the poem "To His Coy Mistress", Marvell has sexualized love, and in "The Definition of Love", he has spiritualized love. These two poems also show how time and fate play an important role in making love. But both poems are dealt with the theme of love. However, Marvell's treatment of love in these two poems is given below:

In "To His Coy Mistress", Marvell presents physical love. This is probably the best known poem of Andrew Marvell. It is a love poem in which he has sexualized love and the speaker offers a strong plea for the beloved to soften towards him and to relax her rigid attitude of Puritanical reluctance to grand him sexual favours. The lover, who may be the poet himself, builds up a really strong case and supports it with arguments which no sensible woman can reject .The poem has thus what is known as a carpe diem theme. (Carpe Diem is a Latin phrase meaning: "seize the opportunity". The full Latin sentence is "Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero" which means: "Enjoy the present day, trusting the least possible to the future" In the Puritan period, virginity, maidenhood was valued most and the Coy means that the lady is not an easy catch. From the begining to the end of this poem the poet presents a picture of physical love. Here we see that the poet laments over the short span of life which is too short to make love. According to the poet, human life is very much transient and within the transient moment of life, pleasures of love should be enjoyed fully. This is why the soft offers a strong appeal to his beloved to be softened towards him and to grand his sexual favour without any hesitation.

Then the poet says that if they had enough time, her coyness would be no crime. Here the poet says,

"Had we but World enough Time,
This coyness Lady were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way,
To walk, and pass our long Loves Day".

The poet also says that if they had enough time, he would have started loving her ten years before the great flood during Noah's time. As in this poem, Marvell has presented physical love, we find a lot of imageries and conceits of physical nature. Such physical reference is present when the poet says that he is ready to spend hundred and thousand years to praise the physical body of his beloved. Here the poet says,

"An hundred years should go to praise
Thine Eyes, and on thy Forehead Gaze.
Two hundred to adore each Breast:
But thirty thousand to the rest."

Then the poet expresses his most sexual tendency by a shocking imagery to make his beloved convince that she should enjoy the present day before going to the grave and he also says that in grave there will be nobody to satisfy the desires of lust, although the grave is a private place. He says,

"Worms shall try
That long preserv'd Virginity:
And your quaint Honour turn to dust;
And into cries all my Lust.
The Grav's a find and private place,
But none I think do there embrace."

So, the poet concludes with saying that if the lovers cannot stop the passage of time, they can at least quicken its speed so as to enjoy as much of pleasures as possible, Saying, "Yet we will make him run".


On the other hand in the poem "The Definition of Love", Marvell has spiritualized love. This poem describes the character of the poet's love for him beloved. This love, says the poet is perfect and therefore unattainable. This love is divine, but for that very reason hopeless. Perfect love of this kind is most unwelcome to Fate who therefore never permits the union of perfect lovers. This kind of perfect love can mean only a spiritual union but never a physical one. This love is "the conjunction of the mind and opposition of the mind and opposition of the stars".

The poet begins with the three dimensional allegorical figures: Despair, Hope and Fate that control love of the whole world. The poem begins with the highly intellectual conceit. And at the beginning of this poem the poet says that the love of the poet has a rare parentage: and its aim is exceptionally strange and sublime. His love, the poet say, is the offspring of Despair and impossibility. Here he says,

"My Love is of a birth as rare
As 'tis for abject strange and high:
It was begotten by despair
Upon Impossibility"

It was so divine a thing as his love. The poet goes on to say that Fate grows jealous of two perfect lovers:

"But fate does Iron wedges drive,
And alwaies aroues it held betwixt."

It does not permit their union because the union of two lovers would mean the ruin the power of Fate. Fate has placed these two lovers as far apart from each other as the North Pole and the South Pole are from each other. The love of the poet and his beloved are however like parallel lines which can never meet. Finally the poet describes the love between his and mistress as the conjunction of the mind and opposition of the stars:

"Is the conjunction of the mind
And opposition of the stars"

Thus the whole poem is a kind of logically developed argument. The whole poem is characterized by Metaphysical wit. Fate also plays an important role in this poem. However, in this poem we find the touch of Platonic love where spirit, soul and mind dominate the theme.

Thus from the above discussions we can say that we find two kinds of attitudes of Marvell in these two poems. The mood is one of happiness in "To His Coy Mistress" in which the lover is overwhelmed with low for possessing his beloved. In “The Definition of Love”, the atmosphere is full of gloom and frustrations as the lover is painfully aware of the impossibility of his union with of the beloved.