“Holy Sonnet”, “To His Coy Mistress”, and “Sonnet 71”.

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"Holy Sonnet", "To His Coy Mistress", and "Sonnet 71".

We have recently studied 3 poems " TO HIS COY MISTRES " by Andrew Marvell in which he is trying to persuade his mistress to sleep with him using the imagery of love sex and death. The second of the three is HOLY SONNET written by John Donre a priest who is challenging death. The third and final is SONNET 71 written by William Shakespeare who is writing to his lover telling her to no longer mourn for him when he is gone .The three poems have very strong emotions and feelings and consist of strong images of love sex and death. Through out the poems the power of persuasion is very is very much apparent.

To His Coy Mistress was written in the 19th century. The language is difficult to understand to a modern reader as it was written before our time, but we can recognise Andrew Marvell is using the imagery of love death and sex to persuade his lover to sleep with him. The power of persuasion is very much apparent, throughout the poem he emphasises that time is of the essence, Andrew Marvell aims his work at his mistress. Using three sections in his work, he hopes to convince her to have sex with him and portrays a sensitive and loving image of himself to do this.
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Marvell uses three sections to give definite structure to his work. The first section is written using the past tense He uses death as a major issue in this poem as in their day they did not live as long as people today "The graves a fine an private place but none I think do there embrace ". He is trying to persuade her by using the power and force of death. He is trying to get her to sleep with him. He achieves this by using quite strong images "thy beauty shall be no more be found ...

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