Andrew Marvell's To His Coy Mistress And Sharon Olds '

In the beginning of Sharon Olds’ Last Night the speaker is in passionate lust, nevertheless, the opposite transpires when the speaker becomes aware that she fell in love. In Andrew Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress, the speaker initiates with the impression that he is in passionate love with his mistress; however, it is quickly perceived that the speaker is only interested in passionate lust. While these poems equally signify carpe diem, they connote it in different ways. Both poems have unique views of what love and passion mean. These two poems use effects of irony and nature imagery to convey their passions.

Passionate love has a sexual theme to it in Sharon Olds’ poem Last Night. The poem takes different twists and turns while the speaker is living through this passionate sexual experience. In the first line the speaker declares: “I am almost afraid” (1). The speaker is implying that they are afraid of this experience and love. The second line of Last

Night brings up dramatic imagery described with nature: “Love? It was more like dragonflies / in the sun, 100 degrees at noon” (2-3). The metaphor of these lines imply the physical heat and passion of the intercourse. The speaker is describing a strange, whimsical experience that was not expected. In this carpe diem poem, we are seeing the speaker live in a moment of time, one where their whole world is changing. The speaker is experiencing a new type of self-awareness. This is impeccably characterized in the lines: “I hardly / knew myself, like something twisting and / twisting out of a chrysalis” (5-7). The speaker is coming out of their shell or self-placed wall. The metaphorical moments of the next few lines follow the idea of the butterfly coming out of the chrysalis: “all / head, all shut eyes, and the humming / like madness, the way they writhe away” (8-10). The moments in which one writhes during sex, is similar to the moment a butterfly emerges as it makes its way out of the chrysalis. The butterfly is lost, writhing and wriggling for birth. Only at the moment the butterfly breaks free, will it realize this new born infancy. To break free, the butterfly must wriggle and writhe away, just as we do whilst having sex.
The speaker reveals that this journey was supposed to be merely causal sex: “Did I know you?

No kiss / no tenderness—more like killing, death-grip” (12-13). The speakers journey, moreover, invokes violent imagery: “holding to life, genitals / like violent hands clasped tight” (14-15). The speaker doesn’t know what is going on, she is holding on for dear life, and she is afraid. The paradoxical irony in the next line, “barley moving, more like being closed / in a great jaw and eaten, and the screaming” (16-17), showcases the violent imagery and the fact that the speaker is closed and has not fully come out of the chrysalis or the experience. The raw sexual experience is coming to a close in the next lines: “I groan to remember it, and when we started / to die, then I refuse to remember / the way a drunkard forgets” (18-20). The speaker’s use of started to die is distinctly winding up to the end of the passionate experience. This moment is a build up to the climax, it’s a moment that cannot be described nor

replicated.
The turning point begins at the climax of the passionate experience: “After, / you held my hands extremely hard as my body moved in shudders like the ferry when its / axle is loosed past engagement” (lines 20-23). In these lines the speaker starts to let go and experience the climax. In the succeeding two lines the speaker brings the intense sexual encounter to a close: “you kept me / sealed exactly against you, our hairlines / wet as the arc of a gateway after / a cloudburst” (23-26). After the climax, the imagery of the poem is no longer violent but almost blissful, they are completely sealed against each other and intertwined. The metaphor of a cloudburst that ensues these lines further describes something heavenly and extraordinary. The speaker finds a sense of security in the passionate experience and realizes it was love after all: “you secured me in your arms till I slept— / that was love” (26-27). This is where the speaker has her realization—she has come fully out of the chrysalis—she fell in love. At the end of the poem there is positive passionate imagery invoked: “we woke in the morning / clasped, fragrant, buoyant, that was / the morning after love” (lines 27-29).