Alex Warham English
Compare Two Poems
The two poems that I have chosen to compare are, ‘To His Coy Mistress’ and ‘Our Love Now’.
‘To His Coy Mistress’ was written in the seventeenth century by Andrew Marvell and ‘Our Love Now’ was written in the twentieth century by Martyn Lowery.
‘To His Coy Mistress’ is a narrative about a man trying to convince a woman to make love with him, the poem uses rhyming couplets and has a regular rhythm. He does this by splitting the poem into three sections. In lines 1-20, he describes to her how he would court her if he had all the time in the world. He compares her to the river Ganges in India and himself to the river Humber in northwest England. He says that he would love her before the great flood and until the Jews convert. He tells her how long he would spend adoring each body part and that she would deserve all this attention. HE uses hyperbole to exaggerate his love. In lines 21-33 the tone of the poem changes with the word ‘But’. He goes on to tell her that unfortunately they do not have all the time in the world and that life is very unpredictable and they could die at any time. He tries to scare her by conjuring up images of death by talking about her grave, “The grave’s a fine and private place, But none, I think do there embrace”. He uses the image of a ‘winged chariot’ to represent time, this is designed to scare her into thinking that time is short and she had better make love while she has the chance. In lines 34-46 he sums up his argument, the word ‘Now’ gives this part of the poem a sense of urgency. He says that they should make love while they are still young and have the chance and that they cannot make time stand still but they can make use of the time that they have together.
