To His Coy Mistress To His Coy Mistress "To His Coy Mistress" is a metaphysical poem written by the English author and politician Andrew Marvell (1621–1678) either during or just before the English Interregnum (1649–60). It was published posthumously in 1681. This poem is considered one of Marvell's finest and is possibly the best recognized carpe diem poem in English. Although the date of its composition is not known, it may have been written in the early 1650s. At that time, Marvell was serving as a tutor to the daughter of the retired commander of the New Model Army, Sir Thomas Fairfax. The speaker
Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets Arnold the whole work, focusing on these six, formed a "compendious story of a whole important age in English literature, told by a great man, and in a performance which is itself a piece of English literature of the first class". In mentioning this reading of Johnson’s Lives at the start of his own article in "The Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson", Greg Clingham describes the topics covered there as “like a list of most of the important issues in literary history during the years 1600–1781" as well as something like a social, philosophical and political history of that era.