Contrasting Love in To His Coy Mistress and Elegy for Jane
If one is interested enough to look, one can find twenty-eight definitions for the word "love" in the dictionary. Such a broadly-defined word has no doubt contributed to the diverse array of poems which all claim (legitimately) to be about "love". Two such poems are "To His Coy Mistress", by Andrew Marvell, and "Elegy for Jane", by Theodore Roethke. Both poems are clearly love poems; however, the types of love that each one represents are quite different. "To His Coy Mistress" is written in a very amorous tone, while "Elegy for Jane" is written with a tone of deep, personal affection and loss.
Dictionary definition number three for love is "sexual passion or desire". This is the stance from which "To His Coy Mistress" is written. Marvell spends the first twenty lines of the poem lauding such female attributes as coyness and virginity (lines 2 and 6). The first twenty lines of the poem are Marvell’s attempt to gain the trust of the object of the poem (for it is clearly written for a young lady). He assures her that if he had the time, he would love her as she deserves to be loved (line 19). He assures her that he could spend over thirty-thousand years praising the parts of her body. He would also wait a time of biblical magnitude (lines 8-10) for the young lady to bestow her sexual favors upon him, if he had the time to wait. However, even in this sort of "you can trust me because I love you and fully appreciate you for who you are" set-up to gain the confidence of the girl, it is clear that his intentions are amorous: the fact that he would spend a mere hundred years praising her eyes, yet spend a collective four hundred years on her breasts (lines 13-15) is...
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...ither father nor lover"). Their bond, ostensibly teacher/student, grew into a friendship far stronger than an academic one. The tone is nostalgic, yet mournful the loss of one for whom the speaker had a deep affection.
Love comes in many forms, and poets have likely described them all at one point or another. With so many different types of love, it is quite possible for two "love poems" to be written in completely different tones. Marvell’s "To His Coy Mistress" is a very amorous poem, spoken by a fiery young man, while Roethke’s "Elegy for Jane" is a mournful look back at a life lost too soon, spoken by a deeply affected friend. Both poems are as poignant as they are distinct from one another, and they serve as an interesting lesson in love.
Works Cited:
Marvell, Andrew. "To His Coy Mistress" and Other Poems. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1997.
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These two poems are meant to be a love letters written by a man to a
10. Walker, Samuel (1999). The Police in America: An Introduction (4th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc.
Stinson, P., Liederbach, J., & Freiburger, T. L. (2012). Off-Duty and Under Arrest: A Study of Crimes Perpetuated by Off-Duty Police. Criminal Justice Policy Review, 23(2), 139-163. Doi: 10.1177/0887403410390510
The overall gist of "To His Coy Mistress" is established in the opening stanza of the poem. It describes a sceneario where a girl has the option to either give in to the young persuaders sexua...
The tone of “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” and “To His Coy Mistress” are different. In Herrick’s poem, his tone is relaxed. For instance when he writes, “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, /Old times is still a-flying,” his word choice has a very relaxed and casual tone. His attitude reflects the relaxed tone in his poem. In Marvell’s poem, his tone is serious. Marvell’s purpose is to persuade his mistress to have sex with him. He tries to lure her in when saying, “Had we but World enough, and Time.” He starts out very seriously, in attempt to convince his mistress. The relaxed tone of “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” and serious tone of “To His Coy Mistress” point out the difference in the way the writers feel about their characters.
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Lawerence-Brown, D. (2004). Differentiated instruction: inclusive stragies for standards-based learning that benefit the whole class. American Secondary Education , 34-62.
...Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning are represented by the traditional love poems “Meeting at Night”, “Parting at Morning”, and “How Do I Love Thee?”, which is one of the most often quoted poems in the English language” (Kirszner and Mandell 904). “In one of pair of poems- ‘Meeting at Night’ and ‘Parting at Morning’- he is concerned with the lengths to which lovers will go be together and the necessity for parting” (Odden 167). Robert and Elizabeth Browning are great examples of what love is, and some of their poems have the theme ‘love.’
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Deiner, P. L. (1999). Resources for Educating Children with Diverse Abilities: Birth through Eight (3rd ed.). Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace & Company.
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There had been many muses to the world of poetry, may it be a person or even a perception on life. Love is one that prevails all in the musings and perhaps there is a reason for that. While there are some that are cynical in the way of love and how it affects a person, love can have many positive effects on the mood and behavior of an enamored individual.With works from well known poets such as Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and even the bard himself, William Shakespeare, the subject of love jumps up from the pages as changing an individual. Not all these authors and word artists agree with how love warps the mind. May the subject of love come from words on paper, paint on a canvas, or even in the lives of these people, love can prevail and