At that time, Marvell was serving as a tutor to the daughter of the retired commander of the New Model Army, Sir Thomas Fairfax.
Critics have also noted the narrator's sense of urgency in the poem's third section, especially the alarming comparison of the lovers to "amorous birds of prey".
The phrase is used as a title chapter in Andreas Wagner's pop science book on the origin of variation in organisms, "Arrival of the Fittest".
It is the title of a Star Trek New Voyages fan episode where George Takei reprises his role as Sulu after being lost in a rift in time.
Also in the field of science fiction, Ursula K. Le Guin wrote a Hugo-nominated short story whose title, "Vaster than Empires and More Slow", is taken from the poem.
Brian Aldiss's novel Hothouse, set in a distant future in which the earth is dominated by plant life, opens with "My vegetable love should grow / vaster than empires, and more slow."
"[9] The phrase "there will be time" occurs repeatedly in a section of T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1915), and is often said to be an allusion to Marvell's poem.
He visualizes sunset, moving from east to west geographically, overtaking the great civilizations of the past, and feels "how swift how secretly / The shadow of the night comes on."
B. F. Skinner quotes "But at my back I always hear / Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near", through his character Professor Burris in Walden Two, who is in a confused mood of desperation, lack of orientation, irresolution and indecision.
This line is also quoted in Ernest Hemingway's novel A Farewell to Arms, as in Arthur C. Clarke's short story, The Ultimate Melody.
The same line appears in full in the opening minutes of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's A Matter of Life and Death (1946), spoken by the protagonist, pilot and poet Peter Carter: 'But at my back I always hear / Time's wingéd chariot hurrying near; And yonder all before us lie / Deserts of vast eternity.
Primo Levi roughly quotes Marvell in his 1983 poem "The Mouse," which describes the artistic and existential pressures of the awareness that time is finite.
He expresses annoyance at the sentiment to seize the day, stating, "And at my back it seems to hear / Some winged curved chariot hurrying near.
The line "My vegetable love should grow / Vaster than empires, and more slow" is quoted by William S. Burroughs in the last entry of his diary (July 29, 1997).
It is also used as the lyrics in the first track of the 2024 film Queer, based on the book by Burroughs; the song was composed by Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and Caetano Veloso.
in the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta Patience contains the line, "If he's content with a vegetable love that would certainly not suit me..." in reference to the aesthete protagonist affecting to prefer the company of flowers to that of women.
The poem, along with Marvell's 'The Definition of Love', is heavily referenced throughout the 1997 film The Daytrippers, in which the main character finds a note she believes may be from her husband's mistress.