Point of View

The poem is written in a first-person present point of view. It is always important, when reading poetry, to remember that the speaker is not the same person as an author: so though this poem is written using pronouns like “I” and “me,” that does not mean that it is Marvell addressing the reader. In this case, the speaker is actually quite a well-defined character, and readers are given a somewhat more psychologically invested perspective on his personality than many poems contain. We learn that the narrator is a young man, of a decidedly romantic disposition, but with a noticeably morbid bent. His thoughts seem to turn inevitably towards death, without his trying to bring the subject to mind. This hinges on the word “but,” which creates the sense that his morbid thoughts are almost interrupting his normal train of thought (21).

The use of the...