To His Coy Mistress

"To His Coy Mistress" is a poem by the English poet Andrew Marvell. Most likely written in the 1650s in the midst of the English Interregnum, the poem was not published until the 1680s, after Marvell's death. "To His Coy Mistress" is a carpe diem poem: following the example of Roman poets like Horace, it urges a young woman to enjoy the pleasures of life before death claims her. Indeed, the poem is an attempt to seduce the titular "coy mistress." In the process, however, the speaker dwells with grotesque intensity on death itself. Death seems to take over the poem, displacing the speaker's erotic energy and filling the poem with dread.