Discuss Marvell's poem "To His Coy Mistress" as an example of metaphysical poetry.

The term “metaphysical poetry” is not a term ever used by
Andrew Marvell to discuss his own poems.  In fact, none of the poets often called
“metaphysical poets” ever classified themselves as such. That term was invented by later
commentators to describe (often disparagingly) the style of such authors as Marvell and
John Donne.

Two brief, reliable treatments of
“metaphysical” poetry appear in The Cambridge Companion to Literature in
English, edited by Ian Ousby (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1991) and in an essay by John D. Jump in Webster’s New World
Companion to English and American Literature, edited by Arthur Pollard (New
York: Popular Library, 1976).  Here are some traits listed these books as typical of
metaphysical poetry, followed by discussion of the appearance of those traits in “To His
Coy Mistress.”

• “strenuous
  argument” (Jump 457): Such argument appears throughout the poem as the
  obsessive male lover tries to convince a reluctant woman to have sex with him.
  Argumentation is especially apparent in such lines as the
  following:

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Now let us sport us while we
may,

And now, like amorous birds of
prey,

Rather at once our time
devour

Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
(37-40)

• “a
  dramatic and colloquial mode of utterance” (Jump 457): This poem is
  dramatic not only in the literal sense (since the speaker addresses another person) but
  also in the figurative sense, since his phrasing is sometimes startling (as in lines
  27-28).


• “urgent feeling”
  (Jump 457): Again, the entire poem displays this trait, but it is especially apparent in
  lines 21-32.


• “agile thought”
  (Jump 457): This trait is particularly obvious in the first stanza of the poem, in which
  the speaker quickly and easily shifts from one kind of imagined behavior to another.
  


• “pun[s]” (Jump 457): The
  most famous example of a pun in this poem is the play on the word “quaint” in line 29,
  where the word can mean “old-fashioned” but can also refer to female
  genitalia.


• “paradox[es]”
  (Jump 457): One example of a paradox is the speaker’s claim that he would love his lady
  “ten years before the Flood” (8) – obviously a temporal impossibility.
  


• imagery drawn from “widely varied fields
  of knowledge” (Jump 457): in the course of the poem, the speaker refers
  to India, England, very early history, the end of history, classical myth, Biblical
  teachings, the behavior of animals, human sexuality, and various other “fields of
  knowledge.”


• “serious wit”
  (Jump 457): The entire poem is witty in the sense that it displays the speaker’s
  cleverness, inventiveness, and skills at
  improvisation.


• metaphysical
  “conceit[s]” (Jump 457): No conceit (or extended metaphorical comparison)
  appears in this poem in the way that one appears, for instance, in lines 25-36 of John
  Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.” Nevertheless,Marvell’s ability to play at
  length with a single idea appears in lines 1-10 of his
  poem.


• “unification of thought and feeling”
  (Ousby 615): The entire poem exhibits this trait, since the entire poem
  uses reason to promote
  passion.


• “violation of
  decorum” (Ousby 615): It would be hard to think of a more blatant breach
  of expected, acceptable phrasing than lines
  25-30.