Comparing 'The Sun Rising' and 'To His Coy Mistress'.

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George Tuck

Comparing ‘The Sun Rising’ and ‘To His Coy Mistress’

    Donne and Marvell take the theme of love to be the overriding theme throughout their poems. But there are ideas such as time itself which are intertwined in the poem. They both view and express that the love between a man and women should ultimately lead to sex. However, Donne has experienced this love with the lady he adores and Marvell’s lover is yet to relinquish her ‘long-preserved virginity’.

    The two poems also have references to time throughout the stanzas. Donne perceives time as a different pressure from what Marvell believes it is.

    The persona Donne assumes has just spent a night with a lady. This gives him the feeling of great power. He believes himself and his love for his lady to be more potent than time itself. He describes ‘hours, days, months’ to be the ‘rags of time’ meaning time is so formulated, whereas their love is free from routine and a greater power than time. This is in contrast to Marvell’s poem. The character portrayed in the poem feels pressured by time as he is yet to sleep with his lover. He begins the poem with a conditional, already rushing her. He continues to rush the lady throughout the poem and even uses images of death to threaten her, for example ‘the grave’s a fine and private place’. This troubles him as he wants to have sex with her whilst she is still young but she continues with her shy but teasingly flirtatious ‘coyness’. He states this in the opening couplet:

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‘Had we but world enough, and time,

This coyness, Lady, were no crime.’

    Donne describes the sun in a negative sense which is unusual as the sun is often seen as a positive influence as it gives us life and without it we would not be here. He believes the sun has disturbed the time with his lover and he challenges what he refers to as a ‘busy old fool’ to go and ‘chide late school-boys’. Personifying the sun makes this line both amusing and plain absurd. He also seems to believe that he is so important the ...

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