Explication of "To His Coy Mistress"

To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell depicts a nameless man speaking to a nameless woman. Here the male speaker begs of the female to be intimate with him and he is quick to remind her of their ever-encroaching mortality. Ultimately, this is the narrator’s inquiry for sex of the mistress and this is best seen in the first stanza. His justification is that there is little time for the two of them saying her refusal to become a sexual partner of his is akin to a “crime.” The man alludes to the rubies of India and compares the mistresses thievery (or stealing of sex from him) to British imperialism. The speaker is not soley considered with a physical relationship but displays having love for this mistress as well. He compares his building affection to the slow process of creating an empire. Upon completion of this empire of love he believes she would “show [her] heart,” which could either mean be finally intimate with him or pay him back with her falling in love, as well. The speaker is genuine in this empire metaphor asserting “For, lady, you deserve this state, / Nor would I love at lower rate.”
The second stanza the speaker returns to his anxiety over time, he fears “Time's winged chariot hurrying near.” But one line later he contradicts himself, stating “yonder all before us lie / Deserts of vast eternity.” It can be argued that the narrator’s incongruity stems from his being desperate for consummating a sexual relationship and then later slowly building a romantic bond. His warning if she doesn’t comply is her eventual resting in a “marble vault” where “worms shall try” to take her “long preserv'd virginity.”
The third and final stanza is his continued plea that the two consummate their relations while they still have a “youthful hue,” to their skin. He finds that if they are quick to get together now then they may “languish,” later. He claims that their “pleasures” will aid them in passing “Thorough the iron gates of life,” and manage the daily strife they are sure to face. His concluding lines are “Thus, though we cannot make our sun / Stand still, yet we will make him run,” depict both the pressure the narrator feels over the passing of time and his finding that with sex they can both speed up and slow down time.