In the third stanza she gives the onion, ‘I give you an onion’- She uses a metaphor.’ Its fierce kiss will stay on you lip’ the bitter taste on an onion remains on a person’s lips. The memory of a kiss can stay with one forever. ‘Possessive and faithful as we are, for as long as we are’ She suggests that love affairs only last for the time that two people are interested in each other or it could mean till they die.
The fourth stanza carries on with the extended metaphor as she insists that he accepts her gift ‘Take it’. She compares the loops of an onion to a wedding ring and implies that marriage can deaden love and passion. Marriage is lethal in her opinion. In the extended metaphor she expresses her feeling, sometimes people never recover from a broken romance. They will continue to experience heartache, pain, bitterness. ‘Its scent will cling to your fingertips, cling to your knife.’ The repetition of the word ‘cling’ is effective. The word ‘knife’ conveys the image of a wound. The poet has obviously been hurt in previous relationships.
As we just saw above the title of the poem is ‘Valentine’s and we first expect it to be a romantic poem but as we read on we see that it had many negative points.
The language used in ‘Valentine’ is very simple, modern and conversational as it is like she is talking to her lover.
The poem ‘To His Coy Mistress’ is about the poet trying to persuade his Mistress to sleep with him. The title of the poem tells us that the poem is addressed to the mistress of someone and she acts as if she is a shy person.
This poem is divided into three main parts ‘if’, ‘but’ and ‘so’. The first part of the poem is ‘if’, the speaker talks about if only he had all the time in the world, ‘Had we but world enough, and time’. He refers to many religious points like the Indian Ganges and the conversion of Jews ‘Till the conversion of the Jews’ the reason for him to do this is because he is trying to persuade her to do something she does not want and the only way to make her believe its right is to talk about religion. The point the speaker is trying to get across to the mistress is if he had all the time in the world he would love her forever.
The second part of the poem is about ‘but’, the speaker talks about the reasons he wants to sleep with her. He talks about how time is running out, because soon they will get old and die ‘Times winged chariot hurrying near’. The speaker also uses metaphors like ‘deserts of vast eternity’ as he tries to make her believe that they are running out of time. The speaker also refers to death as he talks about the grave ‘the grave is a fine and private place, but none, I think do there embrace’, this image tell the mistress that there is no point in her keeping her virginity as it is impossible to have sex in the grave.
In the third part of the poem the speaker goes on to ‘so’, and dedicates the last part of the poem to tell her that they should have sex. He talks about how now is the time and they should have sex now due to the reasons he expressed in other parts of the poem. The speaker also uses lines like ‘now let us sport us while we may’ as he tries to get his point across to her.
The language which is used in ‘To His Coy Mistress’ is quite difficult to understand as it is old English that was written in the seventeenth century.
‘Valentine’ and ‘To His Coy Mistress’ had a few similarities to it, one of the main one was that they were both written to another person and it was written like the speaker was speaking to his/her lover. There were many lines which showed this, like in ‘Valentines’ it was ‘Take it’ and in ‘To His Coy Mistress’ was ‘had we but world enough, and time’. The other similarities were that the both poems were about love.
The poems also had many difference as they were both about the same topic but on different things. The ‘Valentine’ was mostly based on Duffy comparing her love to an onion and trying to express her feelings as much as possible to her lover, this was not so physical. ‘To His Coy Mistress’ was based on only one thing which was sex, in every single part of the poem Marvell as trying to convince his lover to sleep with as soon as possible. There are also other differences like how much modern or traditional the romance was. In the ‘Valentine’ it was much more traditional although it was written in the twentieth century, the reason why I believe this is because it talks about a more serious relationship (marriage). In ‘To His Coy Mistress’ it is more modern due to the reason the poet is trying to sleep with the person before marriage. The languages of the two poems were very different due to the different times that they were both written.
The structures of the poems are also very different from each other as in ‘Valentine’ there is lines with one or two words which help you thing. ‘Valentine’ also does not rhyme as it is the poets true feeling gone straight on to paper. Like I said above ‘To His Coy Mistress’ has three main parts to it and you can see that it is well thought of when being written as there are rhyming couplets and comparisons to religious places.
So overall the two love poems Carol Ann Duffy’s ‘Valentine’ and Andrew Marvell’s ‘To His Coy Mistress’ are written about same topics but for different reasons.
‘Valentine is written to express the true feelings of the poet. There are many points we can see this from, but the main one is what the poem does not rhyme which means that it was not thought about when being written,
‘To His Coy Mistress’ is written to persuade so it is only about one topic ‘sex’ and there are many religious comparisons to make this look right. This is also done by the poem being divided into three main parts ‘if’, ‘but’ and ‘so’. The first part of the poem is ‘if’, the speaker talks about if only he had all the time in the world. This helps him to define his reason to why he is trying to sleep with her quickly as possible. The second part of the poem is about ‘but’, the speaker talks about the reasons he wants to sleep with her and about how time is running out. In the third part of the poem the speaker goes on to ‘so’, and dedicates the last part of the poem to tell her that they should have sex.
