‘We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love’s day.
This uses the Court Pastoral Tradition, exaggerating it and making the surroundings idyllic and dream-like as in Marlowe’s poems, making the act of love seem very easy and casual.
‘Thou by the Indian Ganges side
Shoust rubies find: I by the tide’
This uses the typical clichÉ that you can be miles apart but the love for each other keeps them together. Also, it uses another typical idea of the Court Pastoral Tradition, that nature is perfect and beautiful, identified in how the writer is able to find rubies by the sea, exaggerating it so as to make the idea of wasting time to see if love will grow pointless.
The rest of the section insults the ideals of the other poets that use the Court Pastoral Tradition, stating that if he lived forever, he could spend forever gazing upon his lovers’ beauty and could spend forever before revealing his love:
‘Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews;’
This states that he would not complain about waiting to reveal his love and would even wait until the conversion of the Jews implying in a very anti-Semitic view, that this would never happen. In this section, he uses the values of ten years to imply how long he would wait before he would reveal his love. The use of numbers, is continual for the rest of this section, ‘Two hundred to adore each breast’ and ‘But thirty thousand to the rest’, showing how he would not care how long he would have to wait to reveal his love as he could spend forever gazing upon his lovers’ beauty, ‘Nor would I love at lower rate.’
The final thing to notice in this section is the implicit phallic (sexual) joke, ‘My vegetable love should grow’ showing this idea of teasing and humour throughout the first section.
The second section begins at ‘But at my back I always hear’ and ends at ‘But none, I think, do these embrace.’
The first two lines:
‘But at my back I always hear
Times winged chariot hurrying hear’
Immediately the first section is reversed and inverted, stating that this is not reality and that death, times winged chariot, is catching up with them. And that after death, ‘And yonder all before us lie, Deserts of vast eternity.’ There is nothing, giving an agnostic view that there is no heaven or hell.
The next line, ‘Thy beauty shall no more be found’, saying that you will be beautiful when alive but when dead no one would be able to see that beauty.
On line 26, there is a caesura, (short pause) halfway through the line just after ‘My echoing song…’ as the next section uses even greater shocking imagery:
‘…then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,
And your greater honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust:’
He is saying that after death no one will be able to get to you but the worms and that her honour in preserving her virginity is going to be worth nothing when she’s dead. Through use of penetrating words and displeasing imagery, he is able to shock his lover. And that, even though, death may be peaceful, ‘The grave’s a fine and private place, But none, I think do these embrace.’ no one will be able to love her when she’s dead.
So as to remove the seriousness from the last section, the final section uses delicate ironic understanding to persuade her that love is a positive thing.
In the final section the word therefore is used to make the act of love seem logical and right.
The first two lines state that:
‘Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on my skin like morning dew,’
This shows that, through the definition of fresh moist skin, that the soul wants to come out. This is further shown in the next lines:
‘And while thy willing soul transpires
With every pore with instant fires,’
Again stating that inside her, her soul is burning for her to lose her virginity.
In the next line, ‘Now let us sport us while we may,’ the writer is stating that they should not wait to make love, but go for it now.
The line, ‘Our sweetness up into one ball,’ defines the ball as a perfect shape showing the perfection of love.
The penultimate lines, ‘And tear our pleasures like rough strife Through the iron gates of life;’ shows that he will break through any barriers to get to what they want.
And in the final line, ‘Thus, though we can not make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run.’ once again stating that even though you can not stop time, you can make it race, and commit to love as quickly as possible.
In conclusion, I prefer Andrew Marvell’s poem as it uses far more complex imagery and emotions, choosing three different methods of persuasion rather than one. It also uses strong satire to put down the method of Court Pastoral Tradition employed in Marlowe’s poems make it controversial at the time.
