‘But at my back I always hear
Times winged chariot hurrying near’
This line is clever because ‘Times winged chariot’ is a metaphor for death. It is saying that death is always creeping up on you every second of every day of every week of every month. It will never leave you alone until it has caught you. The poem then carries on to say that we must hurry because after death there is nothing. No afterlife, no heaven, no pleasure.
‘And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity’
This is saying that once you are dead, you have to live forever in nothingness. ‘Deserts’ is also a metaphor because it is nothing not actual deserts, you just find very little in the desert. It is strange that Marvell should write that there is nothing after death in his poem because he was writing in a time when the Roman Catholics faith was very strong. Everyone believed in heaven and a life after death in one way or another. He then tells her that when she is dead she won’t be beautiful anymore, she will be rotting and even though she will have a marble vault, as she is too high class for a coffin, she will no longer have any of the beauty she has now whilst she is alive. He then tells her that if she doesn’t let him be the first to have her, then other creatures like snakes and worms will try instead of him when she is dead, lying in her marble vault.
‘My echoing song: then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity’
This implies that he is telling her that if she does not give in and let him win her over then when death catches up with her and she is lying in her grave the worms and snakes will attack her and steal her virginity that she would not let him have. This quote implies that he wants her to be scared of the fact that if she doesn’t let him have her then unpleasant monsters will try. This is likely to scare any girl. He then also tells her that if she lets this happen then her ‘quaint honour’ would turn to dust. ‘Quaint honour’ is also a double entendre. It means her cute and nice honour but it is also being extremely rude about her body. He also says that once we are dead my energy will be nothing more ‘and into ashes all my lust.’ This shows that he wants to get on with it because once he dies all his energy will be gone and he will not be able to satisfy her every need as he can now. The final line in this section is a couplet that sounds cheery but it is also making a joke about her, making fun of wanting to wait.
‘The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do these embrace’
This line is saying that a grave is a fine place if you want privacy and a place to be alone, but it is not a very good place if you want to get on with it and have fun. The rhythm in this line is bouncy and cheerful, making a joke over the fact that she is being shy. This contributes to the meaning of the poem by speeding it up and making this section seem more bouncy and cheery, but also by summing up the section by telling her that there is no point in waiting.
The third part of the poem is the ‘therefore’ section and it is concluding the argument by telling her that they should just get on and do it whilst they still can. The first two lines in this section are powerful and still flattering her, whilst telling her to stop being shy.
‘Now, therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on they skin like morning dew’.
This couplet has a different rhythm to the end of the last section as slows down much more. In the first line ‘hue’ is referring to colour or to tone and ‘like morning dew’ is a simile. These two lines mean whilst you are still young, colourful and fresh and your skin is wonderful too. This implies that she is beautiful now, but soon that is going to run out and she will no longer be wonderful. He then says whilst you are around me you blush and you look innocent and cute. This is aimed to make her feel better about herself again, and then he goes on to say ‘Sport us while we may’. Here he is telling her that they should get on and do it whilst they can. He then flatters her again to raise her self esteem so she thinks he still feels highly of her.
‘Rather at once our time devour,
Then languish in his slow-chapped power’.
This means she is like birds of prey that eat time. It is saying don’t waste time, and don’t let time waste you away. ‘Slow-chapped’ means slowly eating away at you. Marvell is telling his mistress that instead of letting time eat us away we should roll all our strength and all our love together in love and get on with it. He then puts a couplet in that has a double entendre with a rude meaning.
‘And tear our pleasures with rough strife,
Through the iron gates of life’.
Not only is this talking about barging down Iron gates to succeed in life, but also talking about the ‘gates of life’ in women. He puts this line in because it makes it sound as if he will be succeeding as then finally he will let all his pleasures out in one strife and will break down the Iron bared gates in which have been denying him pleasure all this time. The last two lines in the poem are cleverly written and have a completely different rhythm to all other lines in the poem. It rushes through the first line then stops suddenly, then rushes again.
‘Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run’.
This shows that we cannot stop the sun from moving around the earth but we can give him a run for his money and make it hard for him to keep up with us by filling our life with pleasure whilst we still can. These two lines have no positive rhythm like the rest of the poem does, and when you say them out loud you say ‘Thus’ then you rush ‘though we cannot make our sun’ then you slow right down and put emphasis on ‘stand still’. The last line just runs away with you as it rolls off your tongue quickly and easily. This line seems to sum up the whole poem because it says the sun will not stop so we can have all the time we want, therefore, we must make him run to keep up with us by packing our life full of pleasures.
Overall the poem is trying to persuade a girl to go to bed with a man. I think that it is poem about love and time. It is about wanting all the time in the world so that he does not rush anything, making time stand still so that you can spend all the ages of the world together loving each other slowly, but I also think its about true love. He wants to make love to her and she is playing hard to get. He is getting impatient so he tries to frighten her in the poem by using lines such as:
‘… Then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity’.
This implies that he is fed up with not being the one to give her pleasure, so he is pushing her by giving her a choice between him and the creatures that will also try once she is dead. I think that the poem seems sincere although it also sounds impatient. Almost as if he is fed up with her refusing him so he tries every way he can think of in the poem to get her to love him back. He flatters her, he tries scares her. He gives her advice, carpe diem, and he says that they should want to make the sun run. He also talks as if he has persuaded her. I think that the poem is almost begging her throughout, but using double entendre’s, as he doesn’t want to sound desperate.
The second poem I have chosen to write about is ‘Sonnet 138’. It has certain similarities but also certain differences to ‘To His Coy Mistress’. The biggest difference is that it has fewer lines, only 14 lines that make it a sonnet. It also has a different message within the poem. They also have different rhyming patterns. One similarity is that they are both talking about their girlfriends and they both end in concluding couplets. This poem is organised as a sonnet and uses a lot of puns. ‘To His Coy Mistress’ is a persuasive poem that is persuading his girlfriend to sleep with him and ‘Sonnet 138’ is about him loving his girlfriend, but knows that she is lying to him.
The poem has a simple rhyming pattern. It uses line 1, rhyming with line 3, line 2 rhymes with line 4. This continues throughout the poem until the last two lines which are a couplet. The poem starts off with a line ‘When my love swears that she is made of truth’. This means that his girlfriend says that she is telling the truth. This suggests that she doesn’t always tell the truth to him. He then tells us that he believes her even thought he knows she lies. This implies that he wants to believe her, but is not sure if he can, as he knows she is lying. He wants her to think that he doesn’t know she’s lying so he can pretend to be inexperienced and young. He wants to be a young man again and live a fun life. He pretends to believe her so he can have some fun otherwise his life would be boring. He then says ‘On both sides thus is simple truth suppress’. This is implying that they both pretend to believe what the other one is saying. This, to me, suggests that there is no trust in the relationship and they do not really love each other, simply using each for their bodies. Then he challenges himself asking why they both don’t admit they are wrong.
‘And wherefore says she is not unjust
And wherefore say not I that I am old?’
This means why doesn’t she admit she’s lying and why don’t I admit I’m too old? I think that these are strange lines and the rest of the sonnet reads clearly and simply, but the last line in the quote is harder and doesn’t sound quite right. The poem then concludes itself by saying that love is best if you are decisive about it and you don’t want to live your life being reminded of how old you are so don’t moan or complain about your partner if they let you get away with playing up to be younger than you really are. The last couplet sums it up that we have sex together, we lie to each other, but we are both happy and that is all that matters. The last line in the sonnet, I think is beautiful. It’s saying that when we are together nothing else matters because we are both happy. ‘And in our faults by lies we flatter’d be.’ I think that this is a beautiful way to end the poem because its saying despite all this deceit and lies we tell each other and fool each other we are happy and that is the most important thing.
The overall meaning of the poem is that no matter what, if you are happy then that’s all that counts. I think that this is shown by the fact that in the sonnet Shakespeare tells us about the lies they tell each other and about the fact that there is no trust in the relationship, but this is summed up by the fact that they don’t admit to each other they are lying and tricking their partner because there is no need to as they are both quite happy with the way things are at the moment. I don’t think that the poem is about love, it is more about trust and whether you need trust in a relationship or not if you want to be happy? There are references in the poem towards sex but the sonnet always made me think that if they don’t need trust to be happy does anyone? The sonnet seems sincere to me because although they don’t tell the truth they are both still meeting up and having a good time and living life to the full.
The poems have different approaches to love because the first poem is about trying to persuade someone to love you and the second is about loving each other without any trust. They both talk about love and sex, but they differ in their approaches. ‘To His Coy Mistress’ shows the woman as being shy and ‘Sonnet 138’ shows her as anything but shy as she lies to her man to get him to love her more. ‘To His Coy Mistress’ is written to the lady and ‘Sonnet 138’ is written to the audience and the lady wouldn’t have been allowed to see it as she might have found it offending. Both poems use metaphors, but ‘To His Coy Mistress’ uses them a lot more that ‘Sonnet 138’. The poems use clever ways of getting around what they are trying to say. They are both poems about sex and love, but neither say it, they both avoid the subject. ‘To His Coy Mistress’ uses double entendres such as ‘vegetable love’ for him, but also for love growing naturally to avoid directly telling her they can have sex. ‘To His Coy Mistress’ uses a lot more dirty jokes that ‘Sonnet 138’ and it also uses more double entendres.
‘Sonnet 138’ is structured as a sonnet, 14 lines and it rhymes line 1 to 3, line 2 to 4 with a couplet at the end, whereas, ‘To the Coy Mistress’ is set out in 3 stages and most lines are in couplets. Both have a certain number of syllables per line. In ‘Sonnet 138’ its ten syllables per line whereas in ‘To His Coy Mistress’ its 8 syllables per line. In ‘To His Coy Mistress’ you put emphasis of 4 beats per line, but in ‘Sonnet 138’ the rhythm just flows more like a song. These both add to the meaning of the poem because it gives ‘To His Coy Mistress’ a bouncy rhythm, which helps to persuade his girlfriend into bed with him. The rhythm in the poem is continuous all the way through, in the first section he uses it to make the poem sound like everything is alright, and that they have all the time in the world; but then he uses the same rhythm to scare her that death is creeping up on her, then still using the same rhythm, he concludes the poem and says that they must get on with it. ‘Sonnet 138’ doesn’t have a rhythm that is as strong as the first poem, but it uses the 10 syllables per line to help the poem to flow and it gives it a flowing, sly meaning. The lines vary within the poem but are constant all the way through. It does not have the bouncy rhythm that ‘To His Coy Mistress’ has and it doesn’t use the same syllables to convey different messages, i.e. to scare or to flatter. It uses 10 syllables that are not all always pronounced but sometimes are. This helps to vary the length and impact on the line as you read it out loud. William Shakespeare uses punctuation at the end of every line but only twice uses it in the middle of a line. When there is a comma in the middle as you read it you pause there for a second. ‘To His Coy Mistress’ also has punctuation in the middle of the line and when you read it you also pause and in the last couplet the comma is put after ‘stand still’, to make your voice stop as if your voice is the sun stopping.
Andrew Marvell and William Shakespeare had different ways of writing their poems. Marvell’s poem is sneaky, avoiding the truth, but persuasive to get what he wants. Within his poem his tone of voice changes in the 3 stages. The first stage his tone of voice is flattering and sweetly talking to her, in the second stage he is cross and scaring her, and in the third stage he is fed up and impatient. Shakespeare also changes his tone of voice, but not in the same way as he also starts off by having a sweet tone of voice but then his tone of voice changes as he questions himself almost as if he is cross with himself, the tone of voice goes back to being sweet as he realises that he has what he wants. Another large difference between Shakespeare and Marvell’s work is the use of puns. In ‘Sonnet 138’ Shakespeare uses puns to avoid saying exactly what he means whereas in ‘To His Coy Mistress’ very few puns are used but there are several double entendres. This makes the poem livelier and has a more light heartened feel to it more like schoolboys chatter, whereas ‘Sonnet 138’ is serious and untrusting. Andrew Marvell’s poem is trying to persuade. It is a balanced argument and the purpose of it is to get his girlfriend into bed with him. The purpose of ‘Sonnet 138’ is less clear but it is saying overall that trust and honesty is not needed in a relationship if you are both happy so, it doesn’t matter if you lie to each other. I think that it is trying to convince the readers that dishonesty is acceptable as long as you are both happy. The style of ‘To His Coy Mistress’ and the layout helps to make it clear that it is an argument If … but … so, whereas the style and layout of ‘Sonnet 138’ is different because there are no stages, no paragraphs, except for the last couplet, which is concluding the poem. This couplet is indeed to make it obvious that it doesn’t matter if you both lie provided you are happy.
I think that ‘To His Coy Mistress’ is a very clever poem because it tells a lady everything she would want to hear about herself and then worries her. It uses clever language and it doesn’t have a constant rhyming pattern as some lines don’t rhyme, whereas others do, however the poem still fits together and sounds right. I like the way that it ‘slots’ together because the lines are bouncy, teasing and they roll off your tongue easily so that reading it out loud is easier than if you have to think about each line before you say it. If you do have to think about every line I don’t think that you enjoy it as much. However, I think that ‘Sonnet 138’ is more sincere. This is because it is questioning and proving his judgement rather than begging a girl into bed with him. Neither poem is very wise however because there is the chance that Marvell didn’t get what he wanted because the lady was offended and Shakespeare’s poem is encouraging lies. They both contain dishonesty and ‘Sonnet 138’ contains more lies than ‘To His Coy Mistress’. I find both poems interesting to read, especially ‘To His Coy Mistress’ because of the differences within the poem and because of the way it is written like an argument. I do not find ‘Sonnet 138’ beautiful but I do find it unusual because it has a strange idea that it is all right to lie in a relationship if it makes someone happy, because of this I find the poem offensive, as I do not believe it is right to lie. If I received ‘To His Coy Mistress’ I would be both offended and flattered, but I would have liked to have written it because it is so clever. I don’t think either poem help us to truly understand love because one says you lie in a relationship and the other tells us that women are shy. They contradict each other, but this does not mean that one poem is right and one is wrong, it just shows us two different views of love.
