Comparing To His Coy Mistress and One Flesh

Comparing To His Coy Mistress and One Flesh

These are two poems wrote at very different times, and have some very

different views about love and what is contained in love. Andrew

Marvell wrote 'To His Coy Mistress,' in the 17th century has views are

of a man thinking about his sex life. 'One Flesh,' written by

Elizabeth Jennings in the 20th century has views from a daughter

looking at her parents with a sympathetic view.

In 'To His Coy Mistress,' the language within this poem is much like

the style of language used in Shakespeare's work, and it would seem

they had similar interests and motives on writing their pieces. It

seems that the only reason for Marvell to write this poem was to try

and get his Lady-friend to advance their caring relationship into a

sexual relationship. Within this poem all he is really doing is trying

to persuade his girlfriend to change her mind about wanting to die

pure and innocent, as she wants to die a virgin, and goes about this

by describing some horrific images. This could show that he wants her

to be scared out of her state of mind and into his beliefs. He starts

off trying to sweeten her into wanting to have sex with him, he says

Had we but world enough, and time,

This coyness, Lady, were no crime.

We would sit down, and think which way

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To talk, and pass our long love's day.

He is saying here that if there were a limitless amount of time we

would be able to go out and just think about talking to each other,

but because life is short we can't do that so take a chance and do it.

Then he goes onto say that in an ideal world one would have time to go

to such places as India and search for ruby's and he would not

complain because he would have endless amounts of time with her, but

this isn't an ideal world. Here he is just reinforcing his previous