A Comparison Between A Coy Mistress and To The Virgins

A Comparison Between A Coy Mistress and To The Virgins

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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 “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. “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...

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...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 “To the Virgins” and both authors will therefore have

comparative ideas for example the theme of time which features so

strongly in both poems.