A Comparison Between A Coy Mistress and To The Virgins Essay examples -

A Comparison Between A Coy Mistress and To The Virgins ====================================================== Both Andrew Marvell and Robert Herrick who are writing in the 17th Century which was in the Romantic period and both poems are about love. This comparison ties both poems closely together as well as their identical themes of time running out. Herrick’s poem â€Å"To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time† is essentially a general argument that everyone who has not yet found love should make the most of the short time they have alive and marry someone as soon as possible. The idea of Marvell’s poem is to get his mistress into bed with him. This means that there will be a contrast at points of the poem where some conclusion is reached. Herrick’s poem is much shorter than Marvell’s and therefore his point is brought across in two metaphors to express it and then a conclusion which drives it home. â€Å"To His Coy Mistress† on the other hand comprises of 3 large verses. The first one is humorous supposedly to break down the barrier between him and the girl who the poem is for, the second is used to shock his reader to convince her that she should come with him and the third verse is an actively persuasive conclusion which tells her that he is the only logical choice for her to take. This means that the short four stanza Herrick poem which is composed entirely of evidence and persuasion to back up his point compares closely to Marvell’s who is also persuading his mistress and leaving her no room to defy his argument. In Herrick’s poem, he uses a metaphor of a flower which may be at full bloom and beautiful today but then tomorrow it will be wilting and dying by which he means that the young virgins may be bea... ...ll wants (i.e. to seduce his mistress). This poem is written in rhyming couplets which for most of the poem gives it a melodic persuasiveness however on line 24, which ends with the word eternity does not rhyme with the line above ending with the word lie. This is designed to interrupt the beat of the poem and to disturb the reader so that this word eternity is emphasised and proves the point that when she dies, it will be for ever. Both Herrick and Marvell are male poets from the same romantic period in the 17th Century and therefore the context and language used in their poems are relatively similar. It is also probably since Herrick was a major influence in the poetic world at the time – that Marvell has read â€Å"To the Virgins† and both authors will therefore have comparative ideas for example the theme of time which features so strongly in both poems.