Andrew Marvell’s ‘To His Coy Mistress’ appears, at first reading, to be a carpe-diem-style persuasion with the ultimate goal of the speaker being copulation.  However, further reading into the poem reveals other intricacies.  Repeated references to empires and cultures place an emphasis on the desirability of a specifically Christian population within the poem.  The speaker uses his concern for a lack of time as a persuasive technique against his mistress and repeatedly references death and barren environments as consequences of hesitance.  There is also significant evidence in the poem of the speaker attempting to establish a bloodline to combat his own mortality.  Blatant images of pregnancy and childbirth can be read in the lines “tear our pleasures with rough strife / Thorough the iron gates of life.” (1703)  There is a procreative nature to the speaker’s ‘vegetable love’ as well as the allusion to Greek mythology in the pun at the end of the poem.  The speaker advocates procreation in the name of God rather than simply copulation.  Critic Robert W. Halli reaches the same conclusion in his article The Persuasion of the Coy Mistress.  However, Halli’s interpretation of the poem is limited and his pro-procreative readings of many aspects of the poem are effective arguments but are often incomplete and/or misdirected. 

The speaker begins the first stanza of the poem with the lines “Had we but world enough, and time, / This coyness, lady, were no crime.” (1703)  The speaker is describing he ideal situation for the couple as a world without boundaries of space and time.  Robert W. Halli infers from this line that “the speaker desires extension in time and space beyond the confines of the earthly life span. And I believe the means of its achievement is that proposed in any number of earlier poems…the procreation of offspring.” (58)  However, Halli fails to address the speaker’s first prerequisite, “world enough.”  This lack of worldly space refers to the Christian percentage of the global population.  The speaker here is implying that there are not enough Christians in the world and to refrain from producing more Christian offspring is criminal.  Marvell secures this idea by situating the mistress “by the Indian Ganges’ side” (1703) in the speaker’s description of a world with enough Christianity and time.  The reference to India certainly contains an element of space because it was believed to have been on the other side of the world as well as a dense population.  However, one cannot overlook the implications of heathenism which would have been associated with the Orient.  At the side of the Ganges, the speaker’s mistress finds rubies.  W.L. Braekman’s explanation of this scene in his article “Marvell’s Coy Mistress Finding Rubies” is enlightening.  Braekman describes the ascribed significance of the ruby in the Middle Ages as a “stone (which) puts its owner on good terms with God and with his fellow beings but a sexual connotation is not implied…the stone is said to make its owner loved and respected by all those he comes into contact with.” (529)  Therefore, though the lady is inhabiting a space of heathenism, in the speaker’s perfect world, she remains a faithful servant of God.  Images of heathenism are evoked again in the speaker’s mention of the flood.  The rhyme scheme of the poem is nearly entirely in perfect-rhyme couplets with a meter of iambic tetrameter.  However, at the mention of the flood, the rhyme becomes imperfect: “Of Humber would complain. I would / Love you ten years before the Flood.” (1703)  Here, Marvell inserts variation into his own rhyme pattern to give the line its own slightly disrupted sound.  He is calling the reader’s attention to the line in an attempt to remind the reader that the biblical flood was God’s reaction to a world full of heathens; those who did not obey God’s word were drowned in a global purging.  The speaker goes on to state that in such a timeless, spaceless world, his mistress may “refuse / Till the conversion of the Jews.” (1703)  This line marks a return to the established rhyme scheme and, thus, may represent the world’s return to normalcy or perfection at the apocalypse when the world’s non-Christians repent.  

The speaker continues the description of the boundless world with the lines “My vegetable love should grow / Vaster than empires, and more slow.” (1703)  Halli attempts to illuminate these lines by suggesting that in the timeless world, the lovers do not multiply but simply grow indeterminably.

The “vegetable” soul of human beings, which we share with plants, lies below our animal, rational, and spiritual souls.  According to Cleanth, Brooks, and many others, its qualities are growth and propagation. I believe that Marvell’s contemporary readers would notice that, in the postulated world without death, the lovers do not propagate as they should, but “grow” forever, in a sort of inappropriate vegetative monstrosity. (60)

However, the vegetative love applies only to the speaker in the line which renders Halli’s argument relatively impotent.  Instead, the “vegetable love” is the first reference in the poem to the offspring of the couple.  Marvell is applying the characteristics of vegetables and plant growth to the development of a human child.  This child, once grown, would have the ability to produce its own children, just as a vegetable produces seeds.  This image is continued at the end of the poem with the image of “all our srength, and all / Our sweetness, up into one ball.” (1703)  It is possible that Marvell is continuing the imagery of child as a vegetable; sweetness and strength are both characteristics of many vegetables.  Strength and sweetness are also references to the speaker and his mistress in these lines, combining the male and female aspects within them to create a child.  Thus, through the child, it is possible in this sense for the speaker’s descendants to “grow / Vaster than empires, and more slow.” (1703)  

The speaker concludes his postulation with the hyperbolic suggestion that in a timeless world, he would spend centuries gazing at his mistress.

An hundred years should go to praise / Thine eyes, and on they forehead gaze; / Two hundred to adore each breast, / But thirty thousand to the rest; / An age at least to every part, / And the last age should show your heart. / For, lady, you deserve this state, / Nor would I love at lower rate. (1703)
However, this statement is another reference to the mistress’s future kin.  The speaker is saying that the features of the lady will be present in her offspring and will be admired for tens of thousands of years if she and her offspring continue to propagate.  This explains why there are only a few centuries spent on admiring physical characteristics of the mistress, which might begin to thin out of the generations at this time.  The reference to the last age is also intriguing.  The last age should show the mistress’ heart, which could refer to the time of Christ’s coming.  Her Christian heart should be found for thirty-thousand years in her descendants.  This interpretation is solidified by the reference to vegetable love immediately preceding it.  The allusion to empires continues in the huge gaps of time, suggesting that the speaker and his mistress create an empire together, though more slowly.  

The next stanza references the Greek Apollo pulling the sun on his winged chariot, implying that time does pass and the speakers suggested scenario is impossible: “But at my back I always hear / Time’s winged chariot hurrying near.” (1703)  However, by examining the final lines in the poem, “Thus, though we cannot make our sun / Stand still, yet we will make him run” (1704) another Greek myth can be interpreted.  Halli writes “Zeus stopped the sun to be with Alcmene, not primarily for sexual pleasure, but to produce his son Heracles…Heracles ran famously, perhaps most notably in his pursuit and capture of the golden-horned Cerynitian deer.” (65)  Thus, one can infer that the reference to the creation of the “sun” in this enjambment-style pun, coupled with the earlier reference to Apollo, suggests procreation.  Halli also suggests that the sex of the child is specified because “According to Rosslin, ‘a boy is much easier to deliver than a girl,’ and thus causes, presumably, less ‘strife’ and ‘tearing.’” (66)  However, this interpretation fails to recognize the biological implications of having a son for the speaker.  The continuation of the family name and the speaker’s legacy eliminates the bounds of time for the speaker’s life and allows him to live forever.  This interpretation is solidified by the lines describing the tomb of the mistress: “Thy beauty shall no more be found, / Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound / My echoing song; then worms shall try / That long preserv’d virginity. / And your quaint honour turn to dust, And into ashes all my lust.” (1703)  Here the line is a reference both to pregnancy as well as a familial mausoleum.  The echoing song of the speaker in the vault of his mistress may represent the child in the womb.  Furthermore, it may represent a familial mausoleum, where the descendants would actually be found if the couple continued to propagate.  Robert W. Halli describes the references to sexual organs 

The emphasis here is entirely on the destruction of the generative organs…The words ‘quaint’ and ‘honour’ refer to the female sexual organs and their linkage with ‘dust’ suggests that, through its parallel linkage with ‘ashes,’ ‘Lust’ may well refer to the male sexual organs (61)

Accordingly, procreation is being mentioned even while the threat of barrenness and death lingers in the image.  The rhyme attempts to simulate this barrenness by matching “eternity’ with “virginity” in the lines “Deserts of vast eternity” and “That long preserv’d virginity.”  Here, the implication made is that celibacy will lead to a barren world, and a childless life.  Accordingly, the worry of infecundity exists in the lines “Now therefore, while the youthful hue / Sits on they skin like morning dew.” (1703)  Here the speaker is expressing an urgency to begin procreating before his mistress loses her “youthful hue” and perhaps her ability to bear children.  This worry is repeated in the only couplets which repeat their rhymes, the first at the of the poem: “We would sit down and think which way / To walk, and pass our long love’s day” (1703) and in the conclusion: “Now let us sport us while we may; / And now, like am’rous birds of prey.” (1703)  The contrast of the leisureliness of the first couplet and the immediacy of the second suggests that in the real, non-hypothetical world, haste is required.

Thus Andrew Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress concerns itself quite heavily in fertility and the procreative nature of the speaker and his mistress.  Repeated references to large populations and heathenism suggests the speaker’s necessity to populate the world with Christians.  There are numerous references to pregnancy, infancy, and copulation within the poem, leading towards the birth of a specifically male heir.  This heir represents the speaker’s continuation in the world, free of the boundaries of time and space.  The importance of ancestry is also stressed within the image of the familial mausoleum.  Thus, Marvell is not merely constructing a carpe-diem seduction merely for the speaker’s lasciviousness, but rather for his procreation and continuation in the world.