The title of ‘To His Coy Mistress’ emphasised the shyness and modesty that the woman the poet loves shows. Coyness was considered to be a virtue, and like many other poems of the time, the title would appear to indicate that the poet is writing to praise something he admires in his lady. However, this is not the case, as he writes about part of her personality that frustrates him and he wishes to change.
The first two lines do sum up the poem very well. It basically means that if they had all the time in the world to play with, then her modesty wouldn’t be a problem. By saying this he is pointing out that they haven’t got all this time, so they need to move on in their relationship.
He would wait for her ‘until the conversion of the Jews’. As the Jews are said to refuse to be converted to Christianity until the world ends, he is claiming that he will be patient until a very distant time in the future.
He says that his love will grow ‘more slow’ than Empires. It takes many, many years for an Empire to develop, so he again stresses his patience in waiting for something powerful and precious.
He claims that he would spend hundreds of years focussing on various parts of her body:’ an hundred years should go to praise thine eyes…’ If he had huge amounts of time at his disposal, he would use it to worship every part of her.
To his Coy Mistress is also exaggerated and humorous to some extent, but after he has mocked her desire to be admired endlessly by him, without giving in to his desire to sleep with her, he warns her very seriously that there just isn’t enough time for such things. Before they know it, youth will have passed her by and in fact they will become more and more in danger of death. If they don’t make the most of life while they have the opportunity, they will lose their chance to live life to the full. So she must make love while she is still desirable; she may not have long to enjoy what she has at the moment. This poem is a much more obviously serious attempt to warn the girl that life is short and that we must make the most of it.
The Rising Sun
The poem starts off complaining about the sun disturbing him when he is lying in bed with the woman he loves. He tells it off and suggests that it should go and annoy schoolboys or apprentices or even the ants who should be up and about doing things so early in the day.
He could close his eyes to block out the sun (showing his power compared with the sun’s), but he doesn’t want to do this because he cannot bear to lose sight of his lover. He challenges the sun tomorrow to tell him if the treasures of India are still there, or if they have moved to be with him instead.
This develops into an extended metaphor where Donne compares himself with a king, whereas all the real kings are merely playing compared with what he has right now in his world. The sun is half as happy as he, and there’s a clever bit of word play right at the end where Donne says that because the whole world is in their beds right now, all the sun has to do is shine on those beds and it has illuminated the whole world. It makes life easier for the sun in its old age.
