Andrew Marvell References Worms in 'To His Coy Mistress'
Poet involved
What happened
Andrew Marvell's celebrated carpe diem poem 'To His Coy Mistress,' written around 1650 and first published in 1681, includes one of the most memorable references to worms in English poetry: 'then worms shall try / That long-preserved virginity.' The poem uses the inevitability of bodily decay — including the decomposer worms that will inherit the beloved's body — as an argument for immediate sexual love. Marvell's juxtaposition of Metaphysical wit with visceral bodily reality is characteristic of the mid-seventeenth-century poetic moment.
Literary impact
Marvell's worm passage stands in a direct line of descent from Donne's insect conceits and points forward to the bodily imagery of later English verse. T.S. Eliot, who helped revive Marvell's reputation in his 1921 essay, drew on this tradition of using vermin and decay to give metaphysical argument its physical urgency. The 'worm as inheritor of beauty' motif — rooted in actual parasite biology — became one of the most durable conventions in love poetry, giving urgency to carpe diem arguments across centuries of verse.
Source: Wikipedia
