Compare and contrast the ways in which Andrew Marvell in

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Matthew Dyson                10/05/2007

Compare and contrast the ways in which Andrew Marvell in “To his Coy Mistress” and John Donne in “The Sunne Rising” write about love.

These two poems, “To His Coy Mistress” and “The Sunne Rising” are similar poems, they are both metaphysical (metaphysical means more than physical) poems written around Shakespeare’s time. The main theme of these poems is the same; it is romance and the love of a woman. Yet the two poets have very different opinions on these two things. Within both poems are arguments, in “To His Coy Mistress” it is with the woman and in “The Sunne Rising” it is with the sun. “The Sunne Rising” is about a mans argument with the sun over how important it is compared to his woman. “To his Coy Mistress” is about a man trying to seduce the woman.

The main theme of the two poems is love. There are other themes in the poems which are linked to love, in “To his Coy Mistress” the theme time and how it is passing by is introduced> The three stanzas develop the theme, in the first stanza the narrator in the poem talks about how they could be together forever, “Till the conversion of the Jews” this is saying how they have all the time in the world so they can take it slow, in the second stanza time speeds up, “The grave’s a fine and private place, But none, I think do there embrace.” This means that he will not be able to love her when she is dead and alone. In the third stanza the man is saying they can’t stop time, they should take things fast and make time try and keep up with them. “The Sunne Rising” has a very different theme, it is the sun and the world, instead of the argument being with the woman about them being together, in “The Sunne Rising” it is about how the sun thinks it is so important. In the first stanza he is offending the sun, saying “Bust old fool, unruly sun” the narrator is trying to insult the sun and in the second stanza he is challenging the importance and strength of the sun “I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink” this is the man showing his power and in the last stanza the man is saying how himself and his love are the epicentre of what happens.  These two themes are different yet they are introduced in similar ways, in “The Sunne Rising” this theme is introduced straight away, as the first line is insults towards the sun. In “To his Coy Mistress” the theme of time is introduced at the start of the poem, yet it is introduced a bit softer and slower than in “The Sunne Rising”. The two theme are both linked to love because they help the writers describe the mans love for the woman.

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The poems have some differences as well as similarities, one of these being that “The Sunne Rising” is about personification of the sun, and how the man describes his love of his woman to the sun. “His Coy Mistress” is different as it is about a man trying to seduce the woman. This shows how the main themes are slightly different because the type of love for the two women mentioned in the poems is slightly different because, in “The Sunne Rising” the man is describing the love that he has for his woman is the long lasting and ...

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