[lbo-talk] His Coy Mistress, was Sailing Poem

turbulo at aol.com turbulo at aol.com
Mon Oct 14 08:34:37 PDT 2013


Well, assume it's a seduction poem.. Then why does it make "success" seem so unpleasant: "Tear our pleasures with rough strife / Through the iron gates of life."

Carrol

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The image is a culmination (or climax) to the poem, which has a syllogistic structure: if time and space were infinite, then you (his mistress) could take "all the time in the world" to succumb. The images are of expansiveness and fruitfulness: vegeables growing without limit; the Ganges and the Humber--at opposite ends of the earth; "before the flood"--something that is at the beginning of time, and "the conversion of the Jews"--at the end of time.

But mortal time and space are tragically finite. Thus the images of the second stanza are opposite to those of the first, of time's chariot hurrying, of deserts, of a marble vault--of finitude, barrenness and confinement.

Therefore, carpe diem! Pleasure is the artillery with which we can bomard the limits of mortality ("Let us roll our strength and all/Our sweetness up into a ball"--a cannon ball, that is). With the cannon of pleasure we can penetrate the "iron gates of life", which has a triple meaning: the gates are those of a town under seige, also the vagina, the gates through which babies, and the male member, pass, but, most important, the confines of space and time, against which pleasure is the mortal weapon.

This is the only Marvell poem I know. It has served me well.

Jim



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