Examine the view that Marvell presents the speaker in this poem as disrespectful towards his lover.

Marvell presents his speaker as disrespectful of his lovers’ traditional attitudes toward love. He does this by creating a mocking tone. This tone is presented throughout the poem through Marvell’s use of hyperbole, such as ‘two hundred [years] to adore each breast’. This clear exaggeration of time mocks his lovers’ romantic idea of a timeless love, full of adoration, and presents a potentially disrespectful attitude towards her hopes for their relationship progressing as a ‘vegetable love’ – slow and fruitful. Instead contrasting it after the volta (in stanza two) with a sexual basis of love; subordinate to the higher powers of time and death. This idea of a mocking, disrespectful tone is also seen through the use of biblical reference. Along with hyperbole, the poetic speaker references the length of time he is willing to love his lover using biblical imagery. For example, ‘I would love you ten years before the Flood: And you should if you please refuse Till the Conversion of the Jews’. Whilst this image is used to exaggerate the idea of time also, it is almost teasing his lover for her ideas of a pure, eternal love.However, this mocking tone can be justified by the deliberate exaggeration of time to emphasis the ideas of a lack of time in the urgency suggested following the volta in stanza two. Following this volta, not only does the imagery become more energetic, and desire-based, ‘at every pore with instant fires’, and founded on a more sexual side of love, rather than adoration, but the use of punctuation also changes, emphasising the already urgent structure. This is seen through the increase of end stopping, to further create shorter lines already present due to the use of iambic tetrameter, both of these structural attributes create shorter lines, yet preserve a strong pace due to the iambic tetrameter, and the use of heroic rhyming couplets to sustain a relentless rhythm.