Tuesday, March 15, 2011

TO HIS COY MISTRESS

Wow!

Men have been begging women to give in for a long time, huh?  And women have been playing hard to get for just as long, too.  What struck me the most about this poem is that it was, in my opinion, trying to pass itself off as a romantic declaration of love when in actuality is was a declaration of lust. For example:

            An hundred years should go to praise
            Thine eyes, and on thy 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.
 
So he will take thousands of years to admire her face and her body and once they lose their luster, then the heart will have to do.  His urgency to pressure her into a intimate relationship is so obvious.  And I think that she likes it.  Being coy is different from outright rejection.