Have sex with me now before you die. This is a very strong statement which, when said, has to get someone's attention; and that is exactly what Andrew Marvell intends for the reader in this poem. He wants the undivided attention of this mistress so that he can scare her and rush her into making a decision the way he wants and in due time. Filled with time flavored symbolism, "To His Coy Mistress" by Andrew Marvell, exemplifies the seize the moment theme.
The cyclical, life symbolizing river, the water flowing by like time, is the first place Marvell places the characters. And even though they are very far apart, time still flows by for them both. As the water flows, this concept begins to hint at the shortness of time, for them to have sex, the source of new life. He then proceeds to claim that he could love her ten years before the flood, something already ancient, and up to the end of the world, using the juxtapositioning of the two views of time enhance his argument and to convince to accept his offer by telling her of his long-term commitment for her in the short-term. This flood also symbolizes life in the fresh start of the new covenant. Because time keeps going, with or without them, they must be active participants and not just the static spectator. Otherwise, the fate Marvell
relates would become their reality.
Marvell's vegetable love is rather oxymoronic. Love is not normally like the uncaring, thoughtless, and noncommunicating plant. And yet his love is vegetable in that it is not adaptable. She is the water, food, and light for his love; and as long as she is there, he will love her. She is evrerything that supports his love, and if she is not there, his vegetable could not be...
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...hed 'lines' of more frivolous writers to become a stirring meditation on the importance of living fully during the brief span allotted us (Brians).
Andrew Marvell tries in this carpe diem poem, "To His Coy Mistress," to use time and symbols to convince her to seize the day. He uses the river, the worm and many direct references to time to express the urgency of the situation. He then says that his love is vegetable and that this coy mistress is the only one that can sustain this living love. Then he threatens death, gets aggressive, and shows her that her youth is fleeting, and that if she does not change, she will be miserable.
Sources Cited
Brians, Paul. "Study Guide for Classic English Love Poems," Paul Brians' Homepage. n. pag. On-line. Internet. 3 Sept. 1996. Available:http://www.wsu.edu:8000/~/love-in-the-arts/classic_english_love-poems.html
Carol Ann Duffy uses lots of different words to talk about love. The poem Valentine is a monologue and in the poem she says “I give you an onion” I think that she says this because love is like an onion and has many layers that you have to unpeel until you reach the centre. However, I think there is a more evil side and that she chose to use an onion, because when you cut into an onion you start to cry. In the Poem “Havisham” she writes about her “beloved sweetheart bastard” which is an oxymoron and I think it means that she loves him but hates him at the same time.
Throughout Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, Esther Greenwood’s unsuccessful suicide attempts stem from her evolving relationship with Buddy Willard. Esther’s way of expressing herself is through passing away, in which her constant desire to die roots itself in her multiple suicide attempts. However, she does not follow through with committing suicide which demonstrates her reluctance to end her life. Since Buddy holds much significance over the way she thinks and makes her decisions, his hypocritical comments cause her to re-evaluate her attitude towards him. Esther’s changing notion of Buddy provokes her to further explore her feelings for him, where if she killed herself, she would have no longer been able to look into her true feelings for him.
In this chapter, Esther talks about the bell jar. She says that the sour air from her life is trapped in a bell jar. The sour air is all of the bad things that have happened, all of the things that have ever hurt her. She says that she breathes the sour air that is trapped in the jar, which causes problems in her life. I believe that she means she cannot get away from the sour things because she is constantly near them. You cannot escape air, and Esther cannot escape the sour parts of
In the second stanza, Marvell turns his attention to another “problem” that his lover might pose by not sleeping with him. He writes, “But at my back I always hear/ Times winged chariot hurrying near” (21-22). Marvell is concerned about death in this situation. He is now pleading to his woman because he feels threatened by time. He tells her that time is running out and that they had better sleep together before it is too late. Marvell solidifies this argument a few lines later by presenting the idea of death and the fact that they can not have sexual intercourse once they are dead. He writes, “The grave’s a fine and private place/ But none, I think, do there embra...
Throughout the entire poem, coyness is not regarded as an attractive behavior in the long term view of objective reality. Time is always of the essence, and death puts an end to all physical and emotional interactions between people. This is expressed in the line “that long-preserved virginity, and your quaint honor turn to dust, and into ashes all my lust” (Marvell). As time progresses, so does the process of decay, and this is what leads to the cycle of life and death. Marvell conveys both the biological and emotional need to propagate the concept of carpe diem, seizing the day and taking initiative in the face of time’s constant war against mortality.
Sylvia Plath's Bell Jar is a bildungsroman novel set in New York and Boston.The Bell Jar is a novel which presents feminism, mental illness, sexual double standards and the quest for identity. The Bell Jar itself is an isolated, cold, unbreakable glass and with this Plath is able to portray her mental suffocation and the social criticisms during the 1950’s. The Bell Jar represents Esther’s “madness” but also the madness of all women who are made of unrealistic ideas so are therefore trapped under the “bell jar”.The bildungsroman novel allows the reader to follow Plath’s emotional and psychological growth. Esther is isolated; she was “supposed to be having the time of her life”, “she was supposed to be the envy of thousands” yet she is miserable and is forced to conform to society rules. E. Miller Budick writes that Esther has an urge to establish social norms. In the Bell Jar the protagonist is finding her actual self by
Macbeth was a great man and a powerful solider but his power and influence lead him to do things that a great man would never dream of doing. Shakespeare’s use of diction, occasion, and tone in the play to show Macbeths need for power is stronger than his desire to do good. As Macbeth has this transformation from a man respected by many to a man feared by the people he once loved. This is the iconic story of a tragic hero, placed in the perfect situation but choses to do wrong and changes the course of the story.
“To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” by Rober Herrick and Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” have many similarities and differences. The tone of the speakers, the audience each poem is directed to, and the theme make up some of the literary elements that help fit this description.
Lover A Ballad was written as a reply to the poem To His Coy Mistress.
In the poem “To His Coy Mistress”, the speaker says, “Had we but world enough, and time…I would love you ten years before the Flood, and you should if you please refuse till the conversion of the Jews” (lines 1 and 7-10). The speaker is stating if they had all the time in the world, they would have no need to rush their love making. With all the time they would want he would love her from the very beginning until the very end. The speaker refers to the “Flood” (line 8) as the flood of Noah’s Arc in the Bible, which indicates he would love her from the beginning of time. Next, the speaker says, “Till the conversion of the Jews” (line 10), which would indicate the end of time. In the Bible, it is believed that when Christ comes back for his people the Jews will convert to Christianity. Therefore when Christ returns, that will be the end times. In conclusion, the speaker is saying if they had time from the beginning to the very end, his mistress is welcome to continue being shy. In contrary, the speaker and his coy mistress do not have that kind of time to spare, which is the reason he is trying to convince his wife to surrender her virginity.
There is a similar theme running through both of the poems, in which both mistresses are refusing to partake in sexual intercourse with both of the poets. The way in which both poets present their argument is quite different as Marvell is writing from a perspective from which he is depicting his mistress as being 'coy', and essentially, mean, in refusing him sex, and Donne is comparing the blood lost by a flea bite to the blood that would be united during sex. Marvell immediately makes clear his thoughts in the poem when he says, "Had we but world enough, and time/ This coyness, Lady were no crime", he is conveying the 'carpe diem' idea that there is not enough time for her to be 'coy' and refuse him sexual intercourse and he justifies this thought when he suggests when she is dead, in ?thy marble vault?, and ?worms shall try that long preserved virginity?. He is using the idea of worms crawling all over and in her corpse as a way of saying that the worms are going to take her virginity if she waits until death. Donne justifies his bid for her virginity in a much longer and more methodical way, he uses the idea of the flea taking her blood and mixing it with his, ?It suck?d me first, and now sucks thee?, and then...
Response to His Coy Mistress Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" is the charming depiction of a man who has seemingly been working very hard at seducing his mistress. Owing to Marvell's use of the word "coy," we have a clear picture of the kind of woman his mistress is. She has been encouraging his advances to a certain point, but then when he gets too close, she backs off, and resists those same advances. Evidently, this has been going on for quite some time, as Marvell now feels it necessary to broach the topic in this poem. He begins in the first stanza by gently explaining that his mistress's coyness would not be a "crime" if there were "world enough, and time…" (l.2).
Marvell uses many images that work as tools to express how he wishes to love his mistress in the first stanza of the poem. From line 1 to 20 Marvell tells his mistress how he wishes he had all the time in the world to love her. In the very first line Marvell brings up the focus of time, “Had we but world enough and time/This coyness, lady, were no crime”. The second line shows the conflict that the author is facing in the poem, her coyness. Marvell continues from these initial lines to tell his mistress what he would do if he had enough time. In lines, three and four Marvell talks of “sitting down” to “think” where they will walk on their “long love’s day”. All of these word...
Will's beloved is "more lovely and more temperate (18.2)" than a summer's day; "the tenth Muse (38.9);" "'Fair,' 'kind,' and 'true' (105.9);" the sun that shines "with all triumphant splendor (33.10)." We've heard all this before. This idealization of the loved one is perhaps the most common, traditional feature of love poetry. Taken to its logical conclusion, however, idealized love has some surprising implications.
Structure, a major tool stressed in this poem, tends to rearrange the text in a large-scale way. In "To His Coy Mistress", the reader should focus on the most significant types of structure: stanza and temporal. In other words, time and chronological order assemble the whole meaning of the text throughout the poem. Although the story contains seduction and intimacy, which is portrayed in the title alone, it is merely a cry for two lovers to be together before time runs out. Temporally, the man first explains to the woman how he would love her if he only had the time. The man's sincerity is truly expressed when Marvell writes, "Had we but world enough, and time...I would love you ten years before the flood...nor would I love at lower rate," (373: 1, 7-8, 20). It seems that the man genuinely cares for the lady, or is he secretly seducing her into bed? Taking a look at the second stanza...