In his provocative cry to carpe diem (seize the day), Marvell’s speaker in “To His Coy Mistress” issues a challenge to contemporary beliefs about female sexuality. The Reformation years witnessed a shift away from the medieval church’s embrace of celibacy to an emphasis on “holy matrimony.” Yet seventeenth-century preachers would emphasize similarly the importance of female chastity in marriage and warned also of the moral and spiritual repercussions of lust.