To His Coy Mistress" - pages XXXXXXXXXX NOTE: you can cut and paste the URLnumber to access the text for reading. You should answer one of the following questions as you analyze the text of your...

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1. Write an analysis in which you discuss the author’s meaning in the text. What is he/she talking about and how does that speak to our world today? What literary devices does the author use to accomplish this task?
    Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”, published in 1681, is a revolt against the conventions of Petrarchan courtly love. It explores the themes of love, death and sexual desire, common in seventeenth century metaphysical poetry. It employs the motif of carpe diem or “seize the day” to foreground the transience of life and the inevitability of death. The poet asks the beloved to abandon her “coyness” (Marvell 2) as his lust and her “youthful hue” (Marvell 33) will diminish with the passage of time. He expresses a sense of urgency in the need to fulfil his sexual desire: “Now let us sport us while we may, / And now, like amorous birds of prey, / Rather at once our time devour” (Marvell 37-39). While the Petrarchan love poetry puts the chaste, unattainable beloved on a pedestal, Marvell...