To His Coy Mistress

Marvell uses bird symbolism and similes when suggesting the act of sex. This creates an image of sex that is natural and normal. His comparison of the lovers to birds is a playful, but also deadly, one: “let us sport while we may, / [...] like amorous birds of prey” (Lines 37-38). These birds are not the peaceful species usually associated with love—doves—but rather birds of prey. Marvell emphasizes the speed of predatory birds. They “devour” time “at once” (Line 39), or attack their prey in a flash or an instant. Marvell’s use of predatory birds draws upon other literary love chases that involve ornithological and natural euphemisms for sex, like Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis.

Furthermore, the preeminent example of a bird of prey is the eagle. The eagle, according to A Dictionary of Literary Symbols, is “associated with the sun” (66), connecting the predatory birds to another natural and celestial symbol in “To His Coy Mistress.”

Marvell’s poem interlinks the sun and time. Not only does time have a “winged chariot” (Line 22), which evokes the Greek sun-god Helios, but the “sun” (Line 45) running after the lovers is the final image of the poem. Christianity operates with a solar calendar, and the hours of individual days were marked by sundials long before the invention of modern clocks.