Read "To His Coy Mistress," "The Definition of Love," "The Picture of Little T.C. in a Prospect of
Flowers," "The Mower's Song," and "The Garden."  In discussion, we will concentrate on "To His Coy Mistress" and "The Garden," but feel free to bring up any of the others as well.   You may also recall, and take into consideration, that we have already read three other poems by Marvell:  "The Mower Against Gardens," "An Horatian Ode on Cromwell's Return from Ireland," and "Bermudas."  In order to focus our discussion, please be prepared to answer the following questions:

Link to a brief study guide on WIT: how important is wit in Marvell's poetry? 
What seem to you to be the most important characteristics of Marvell's poetry?  What are his principal goals as a poet?
 

I.  "To His Coy Mistress"
   A. This is one of the greatest carpe diem poems in English (cf. Glossary definition), but it takes the speaker a while to get to the part of the poem where he urges the lady to sieze the day (and him!).  What is he doing in the first twenty lines of the poem?
 B.  The poem has something of the structure of a logical argument:  if x were true, then y would be a reasonable way to proceed; but since x is not true, y is not a reasonable way to proceed; thus, we must explore another way of proceeding, z.  To what extent is this an intellectual appeal, and to what extent is it meant to play upon the mistress' emotions and feelings?  Insofar as it is the latter, which emotions and feelings does it evoke or invoke?
  C.  How does the imagery shift at line 21?  That is, how do the visual, auditory, and tactile images of lines 21-32 differ from those preceding?  Do you detect any patterns in the imagery of the poem overall?  Note them in order to discuss in class.
 D.  In line 27, the speaker makes a metapoetic reference to his own "song"; how does this reference compare to the way Herrick uses the word "song" in the last stanza of "Corinna's Going A-Maying"?  Consider what function the speaker claims for poetry (or assumes that poetry will serve) in each of these pieces.
  E.  How do the images of the third verse paragraph answer and counteract those of the second?
  F.  What are the "iron gates of life" and what does it mean to "tear our pleasures with rough strife / Thorough" them?  [Note that "thorough" is just a Renaissance spelling of "through"].  This is a much-debated interpretive question.
  G.  It would seem at first glance that "To His Coy Mistress" and Marvell's "Horatian Ode Upon Cromwell's Return" (which we read earlier in the course)  have very little to do with each other.  But I think that both of them are characterized by a uniquely ambivalent handling of revolution.  In each, Marvell combines full-throated enthusiasm about a new order of things (whether that involves a revolt against Petrarchan-style adoration or the beheading of a king) with an uneasy sense of how much goodness and nobility there was in the old order.  He cannot bid farewell to coyness and blazons, or to the dignity of the condemned King Charles, without acknowledging them in very vivid terms; and he is in each case turning to an alternative that is by no means calmly triumphant.  Both the new way of loving and the new way of ruling a country involve violence and the courage of the predator.  Do you see this sort of dual attitude in any other poems by Marvell?

II.  "The Definition of Love"
A.  How does this poem rework Petrarchan love?  What is the principal obstacle to love's fulfillment in Petrarchan sonnets?  What is the obstacle here?
B.  How does the personification of Fate function in this poem?
C.  What does the language of mathematics contribute to this poem?

III.  "The Picture of Little T. C. in a Prospect of Flowers"
A.  Who is addressed in stanzas 1-2?  In stanza's 3-5?
B.  What is the point of this poem?  What does it do to or for the reader?
C.  How does this poem compare to the carpe diem poems we've read?
D.  Is this a love poem?  Is it erotic?
E.  A question for you if you've read Nabokov's Lolita:  Is Little T.C. a "nymphet"?

IV.  "The Mower's Song"
A.  How do the two refrain lines that conclude each stanza work?  Consider the effect of the rhythm, the repetition, and the variation within the repetition.
B.  What is the Mower's relationship to the grasses he cuts?

V.  "The Garden"
 A.  Compare the speaker of this poem to Adam in Paradise Lost.  How is he different?  How similar?
 B.  To what extent is this poem a response to Renaissance ideas of Platonic Love?  To what extent and in what ways is the speaker a Neo-Platonist?
 C.  To what extent is this poem a response to Petrarchism?
 D.  Compare the attitude toward time in this poem to that expressed in "To His Coy Mistress"; do the speakers have different ways of coping with it?  Do their methods have anything in common?
 E.  If this is a love poem, who or what is the beloved?
 F.  Is this poem witty?  Wherein lies the wit?
 G.  Is it humorous?  What lines do you find funny, and why?
 H.  What does the phrase "from pleasure less" mean in line 41.  Don't simply rely on the footnote.  What exactly is happening to the mind in this stanza?
 I.  Stanza six continutes with some very cryptic lines about the mind's creative and destructive function:  "it creates, transcending these, / Far other worlds and other seas, / Annihilating all that's made / To a green thought in a green shade."  Is the mind's action essentially positive or negative here?  How can it create and annihilate at the same time?  What is "a green thought in a green shade"?  And what does it mean for "all that's made" (made by whom? what "all" is meant?) to be "Annihilat[ed] . . . / To" that shade?
J.  How does the perspective change in the final stanza?
K.  Who is "the skillful gardener" of the final stanza?
L.  Through most of the poem, the speaker uses the first person singular, but in stanzas 4 and 9, the pronoun "we" appears.  Who are "we" in each case?  What is the effect of the first person plural's introduction into a largely singular context?