Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" is a poem in which the speaker is slyly seducing a nameless women. He walks his "coy mistress" through the kind of courtship that they could have if time wasn't of the essence. Being that there is no time to waste, the speaker proposes that he and the mistress should make the most of the time they have and engage in more intimate, physical embrace. In this poem, Marvell uses allusions, metaphors, and imagery to heighten the experience of the passing of time and his carnal lust.
Marvell uses references and allusion to show the passing of time. He references walking down these two flowing bodies of water, the Indian Ganges and the Humber, to pass the day. The Indian Ganges is a river in India that runs approximately 1,560 miles through India and is the third largest river in the world. The Humber is a large estuary on the east coast of Northern England. To walk along side these two bodies of water would take weeks, which is time that, theoretically, would spend if he and his mistress had that kind of time. He also alludes to "the Flood" and "conversion of the Jews", which are both stories found in the Christian bible. The imagery used to describe the mistress' body and the birds in the air are also used to illustrate the speakers carnal lust for the mistress
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