How do the three poems To His Coy Mistress, The Sick Rose and

How do the three poems To His Coy Mistress, The Sick Rose and

Sonnet 138 convey the imperfect nature of love?

Each of the three poems conveys the imperfect nature of love in one

way or another. Personally I feel that love can never be perfect as

there are always going to be arguments that arise in any relationship.

I think that two people can love each other but it will never be

perfect unless there is complete trust and understanding in all

situations. Another reason is that there is no such thing as

perfection so therefore everything can always be better.

The three poems that I am comparing are ‘To His Coy Mistress’, Andrew

Marvell (1621-78), ‘The Sick Rose’, William Blake (1757-1827) and

‘Sonnet 138’, William Shakespeare (1564-1616) None of the poems

portray a romantic idea of love, but more the dark side of it. Each

shows a different aspect of love. However they all show that love is

not perfect.

Although each poem deals with the imperfect nature of love, they each

have their own diverse theme. ‘To His Coy Mistress’ is about sexual

desire and basically the poet trying to get his mistress into bed. In

this poem the man is trying to persuade and pressure the woman. We

then have a poem that can also be interpreted as sexual. An example of

the sexual implications of te poem is however this poem’s

interpretation is more down to the reader and how they view it. Even

with its many interpretations ‘The Sick Rose’ essentially gives a

warning about the dangers that love can bring. The third poem has no

similarities within the theme as the others do. ‘Sonnet 138’ deals

with the imperfect nature of love through the form of lies within a

relationship. We can see similarities between the themes of ‘To His

Co...

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...e similarities

within the tones but William Shakespeare’s is completely different to

both of them. This poem is more thoughtful and advising. It starts as

thoughtful then begins to become questioning. At the end it then

develops a tone of resignation.

Overall in my opinion ‘The Sick Rose’ is the poem that depicts the

imperfect nature of love best. This is because it is the most serious

of the poems and it is the one that contains the most warnings. In the

other two poems there is a feeling of happiness. Even in ‘To His Coy

Mistress’ there is a sense of love in the relationship. ‘The Sick

Rose’ however does not give any feelings of happiness but instead

reveals a rather dark side of love that nobody would like to be part

of. It shows more the pain involved in love. The poem shows that even

although people feel love it may not necessarily make them happy.