Wednesday, October 6, 2010
To His Coy Mistress
Andrew Marvell's poem To His Coy Mistress, the line "And your quaint honour turn to dust" refers to the mistress of whom the speaker is romantically interested in. He adopts a persuasive tone to convince this woman to refrain from being coy and instead to act on the love that they both share. The term "quaint" next to honour makes the woman's values of abstinence appear old-fashioned and unusual according to the speaker. If she continues to deny herself of any temptations, later on in life, she will have problems with finding a suitor because her beauty has "turn to dust." The speaker's argument compels her to reexamine her morals by taking into consideration that her youth is fleeting and that time doesn't last forever.
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Good analysis!
ReplyDeleteBrynn, I think you did a great job analyzing this line. You do a great job breaking down the line, word by word, which I think is great. I agree with you on our entire statement about how the speaker points to time to get his mistress to accept his offer. Like you said, the mistress only has a certain amount of time until her beauty "turns to dust," so it would be in her best interest to change her no to a yes.
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