Tone is the speaker's attitude, whereas mood is the reader’s feeling. These devices are therefore crucial to literature in order to familiarize and personalize the text, providing an emotional relationship to the reader. In “To His Coy Mistress”, Marvell’s tone shifts throughout the poem. Seeming romantic, the poet explains how his love for his mistress transcends time, "My vegetable love should grow Vaster than empires, and more slow". The reader expects the poem to be a progression of their mutual love and unwavering loyalty to each other. However, the speaker expresses urgency, with morbid descriptions of inevitable death, contradicting his previous claims about boundless and timeless love, "Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound My echoing song; then worms shall try". In lines 27, 29, and 30, the words "worms,” “dust,” and “ashes" alter the pleading (manipulative?) tone introduced through imagery associated with decomposition. These words firmly establish the crass reality of looming death, developing a melancholy tone. The jarring juxtaposition leads the reader to question the speaker's true desires regarding his lover. The matter becomes convoluted and the only solution is the passionate tone, devoid of genuine affection: "And now, like amorous birds of prey, rather at once our time devour". "To His Coy Mistress" begins with a tone of romance and tranquility but concludes with almost violent lust. In response to this tonal transition, the mood of the poem changes drastically. The reader is clued into the mood shift by obvious word such as “But” and “Now”. From sweet and romantic to sexual and tense, the reader responds to the man’s shift in mentality.
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