That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
Or woods or steepy mountain yields.’
This depicts, incorrectly, that all the riches and pleasures of high quality living can be found in nature. This reinforces a dream-like world where nature is perfect and is a simple luxury. This is further shown in the next verse. In the first line, ‘And we will sit upon the rocks,’ something that is meant to be uncomfortable is made out to be nice and comfortable, reinforces the falseness of this poem.
The next line, ‘And see the shepherds feed their flocks’ shows benefits without input, depicting the writer isn’t even a shepherd but a rich man pretending to be poor.
The third line, ‘By shallow rivers, to whose falls’ is once again showing in a false statement that nature is safe, shown in the fact that the river is made out to be shallow and safe.
Finally, in the fourth line ‘Melodious birds sing madrigals.’ Madrigals are complicated songs sung by aristocrats at court, not by birds in the country. These first two paragraphs have created an obviously fake, almost dream-like depiction of ‘rural paradise’. This is very traditional of the Court Pastoral Tradition of writing as it gives the reader, mainly aristocrats a type of sophisticated poetry fanaticising a simple life, something that most aristocrats liked the idea of as it allowed them to experience the simplicity of rural life without the removal of the creature comforts they are used to.
The third, fourth and fifth verses combine this idea of natural perfection with the riches of an aristocratic way of life, combining the simple and sophisticated, embellishing the natural with riches from the countryside:
‘A cap of flowers, and a kirtle (a type of shirt/gown)
Embroidered with leaves of myrtle.’
‘A belt of straw and ivy-buds
With coral clasps and amber studs:’
At the end of the paragraph, the writer asks:
‘And if these pleasures thee may move,
Come live with me and be my Love.’
This states that if she lives with him, he will be able to give her everything to make her live perfect. The repetition of the final line and the simplicity of it are used to show how easy it is to give up all she has for love.
On first inspection of the final verse:
‘The shepherds swain shall dance and swing
For thy delights each May morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.’
It seems that it will be happy day when the writer’s love decides to live with him, the May morning historically being a day to declare ones love.
On closer inspection, in the third sentence, the word mind is very important. This word shows that the whole persuasion of the poem is actually conceived and imaginary, possibly even a deliberately conceived dream to show off and manipulate the writer’s lover, the gender unknown due to the homosexual nature of the writer.
The poem, even though it may seem so far-fetched and imaginary, would have been very successful. It was aimed at aristocrats, the main readers at the time (education still meant most common people could not read or write), using Court Pastoral Tradition, very popular amongst aristocrats as it combined sophisticated living with the simplicity of the country.
Andrew Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress is also trying to convince his reluctant girlfriend, ‘His Coy Mistress’, to love him, this time in the act of having sex. It uses a heavily different style than the first poem, although it keeps rhyming couplets:
‘Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.’
But it uses irregular sentence length. The writer uses a metaphysical combination of strong ideals and complex intellectual ideas to bring across his strong feelings, very different to Marlowe’s poem that was very simple and unemotional. The writer uses three irregular sections using different methods to woo his mistress.
The first section starts at ‘Had we but the world’ on line one and ends at ‘Nor would I love at lower rate.’ on line 20. The method employed in this section uses the Court Pastoral Tradition in a sarcastic and humorous way.
The first two lines:
‘Had we but world enough, or time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.’
Stated that if the writer had enough time then it would not matter that his girlfriend is reluctant as he could spend forever convincing her to love him.
‘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.
