The Use of Hyperbole in Andrew Marvell's Poem, “To His Coy Mistress"

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines hyperbole as “extravagant exaggeration”. We find that even if one engages in a hurried reading of Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”, the hyperbole is inescapable.

The lover declares his love fervently and vehemently – asserting that he will love his paramour for no less a period than ten years from before the Great Flood to the time of the apocalypse, which traditionalist Christians believe will be accompanied by the conversion of the Jews.

The young man employs syllogistic flattery and reality simultaneously. He suggests that for someone whose countenance is so beautiful, she could postpone responding to his loving supplications by journeying to exotic, faraway lands, such as the banks of the river Ganges, while he would continue to mourn the separation and unresponsiveness by the river Humber (incidentally, in the author’s hometown). However, in the same breath, he insists that in reality, youth is fleeting and so, she must accept his proposal immediately.

It also appears that in his fervent love for his coy lover, the young man has warped the concept of time. He insists that he will need a hundred years to praise her eyes and gaze upon her forehead, two hundred to adore each of the twin constituents of her bosom, and another thirty thousand years to complete the aforementioned activities with the rest of her body.

For all his love-tinged pleas and cries, he does not hold back on the occasional withering commentary; note how the young man uses morbid imagery to shock his mistress into accepting his proposal when he says, “…worms shall try that long preserved virginity…”. Using this not-so-thinly-veiled reference to death, the lover seeks to convince his mistress of the futility of resisting him.