“All this poet does is feed some woman a big line. There’s no time for romance, so he says, ‘Quick, let’s hit the bed before we hit the dirt.’” Discuss this summary. Then try making your own, more accurate one. Suggestion: The poem is divided into three parts, each beginning with an indented line. Take these parts one at a time, putting the speaker’s main thoughts into your own

Question

words.

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

There’s a grain of truth to this paraphrase, rude though it be. We might question, however, whether Marvell’s speaker is trying to hoodwink his loved one. Perhaps he only sums up the terrible truth he knows: that time lays waste to youth, that life passes before we know it. He makes no mention of “romance,” by the way—that’s the paraphraser’s invention. A more nearly accurate paraphrase, taking the three divisions of the poem one by one, might go like this:
Lines 1–20: If we had all the room in the world and if we were immortal, then our courtship might range across the globe. My love for you could expand till it filled the whole world and I could spend centuries in praising your every feature (saving your heart for last). After all, such treatment is only what you deserve.
Lines 21–32: But time runs on. Soon we’ll be dead and gone, all my passion and all your innocence vanished.
Lines 33–46: And so, while you’re still young and willing, let’s seize the day. Let’s concentrate our pleasure into the present moment. Although we can’t make the sun stand still (like Joshua in the Bible), we’ll do the next best thing: we’ll joyously make time fly.
Now, obviously, any such rewording of this matchless poem must seem a piddling thing. But if students will just work through Marvell’s argument part by part, they may grasp better the whole of it.