To His Coy Mistress Tone

The two poems “ To his Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell, and “ To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” by Robert Herrick share the same theme. This said theme would be carpe diem, which essentially just stands for take advantage of today before it's too late. Although they have the same theme, the author’s portray it different with the use of word choice, imagery, and tone. First of all, the poem “To his Coy Mistress” is about a man who tries to acquire the attention of a lady by telling her that she should make the most of her life before time ends. Along the stanza the tone changes, such as in the first stanza where the man explains to the girl how much he would love her in the span of forever. Whereas in the second stanza he reveals that they

The tone of the poem is pesimist because the speaker tells the girls that time is catching up to them and they must hurry to find love. This poem mainly focuses on time rather than love, which makes it less strong as a carpe diem poem. Moreover, the word choice of this poem also mainly represent time such as “Be not coy, but use your time” and “this flower that smiles today tomorrow will be dying”. These phrases are used to induce the girls to be aware that time is passing them quickly and they will not be young forever ; therefore they must look for someone to marry before it's too late and they end up alone. The imagery utilized in the poem is the flowers and the sun . In the first stanza the speaker uses rosebud to represent the shortness of life and that one should take advantage of life. Further in the second stanza he uses the sun because the closer the sun is to setting is the same as one’s life is to ending. Since this poem focuses mostly on time , it does not do the best job at completely expressing the carpe diem