Portrayal of Love in Sonnet 18, The Sun Rising and To His Coy Mistress

Portrayal of Love in Sonnet 18, The Sun Rising and To His Coy Mistress

The three poems studied for this, all contain material describing love

for a woman. Among this theme are other underlying messages being

projected to attentive readers but the theme which will most probably

be initially remarked upon or noticed by someone reading these poems

for the first time will be their dedication to the female form.

Sonnet 18 by Shakespeare begins with what seems like an ode to a

special person, we can assume is a women. Shakespeare uses terms such

as "lovely" and "darling" in order to describe the image which he

wants to portray of this particular person. These descriptions

initially seem entirely complimentary towards the subject seemingly

implying that she is full of love. However, the word "temperate" is

also used in the same phrase as "lovely". Temperate meaning not too

hot or too cold, seems to imply that the subject being discussed is

average. These too words used side by side seem to imply a

contradiction within that particular phrase. The word "temperate" in

this phrase could also be describing the subject's personality as

average, nothing special. This would make the phrase quite a complete

description if that were the case, as we would have the physical

description as "lovely" in juxtaposition with the description of the

personality as perfectly ok, average, nothing special.

Shakespeare continues by stating that the summer seems to be too short

with "summer's lease hath all too short a date". It seems that the

subject is described as perfect during the summer but as in the

previous phrase "Rough winds do shake the darling buds...

... middle of paper ...

...g. We are,

throughout the poem, reading the authors thoughts, contemplating at

his thought process and evolution.

In the poem "The Sun Rising", we explore similar themes to those seem

in Sonnet 18. We have a comparaison of women to nature and love to

nature. We also have the process of questioning in the poem, although

in "The Sun Rising", the answer in already formulated within the

question unlike in Sonnet 18 where the answer is among the rest of the

poem. The construction of both these poems is extremely different.

The poem begins with the phrase "Busy old fool, unruly sun,". "Busy"

is a word which has a very explosive sound when pronounced due to the

harsh tone of the B. In this phrase it seems to represent a nosy

person whereas "unruly Sun" seems to represent something very strong

and difficult to control.