The persona balances the merit of his mistresses coyness against the consequences as he knows that if she is determined to have a certain coyness then possibly it would go against her as men would find her unattractive ‘ Thy beauty shall no more be found’. In modern day society many men would find women who were being shy to be ‘mysterious’ which would make them, the men interested and more determined.
The persona is using a false pretence until line 21 when he becomes aggressive as he doesn’t take kindly to rejection. His usage of time is to speed things along as he is very impatient as Marvell shows in line 22. The persona tells his mistress that time is now taking over and will soon be beyond them ‘ Times winged chariot hurrying near’ then there be no time for him or anyone to enjoy her beauty. However in line 23 he emphasises that their time is finite, it will run out. Death is before them ‘…yonder all before us lye’ and they mustn’t waste another minute bantering with words but should indulge in love.
He cleverly uses metaphors to interpret the consequences of his mistresses coyness ‘And your quaint Honour turn to dust;’ as he is simply saying that one day the act of preserving her virginity will deteriorate into nothing. This would have made his coy mistress think about whether she is doing the right thing by not accepting his offer of love. His usage of understatements i.e. ‘the graves a fine and private place, but none I fear do there embrace’ is set to disturb his mistress as the comment is revolting to both reality and imagination. This evidently would make his mistress feel quite insecure as she may then doubt about whether she is doing the right thing.
The persona refers to marble vaults- this could be an illusion to the mistress herself as he could be referring to her pale skin and also the fact that she had never lost her virginity so she was forever pure. Marble as an image is cold and smooth no little nicks or crevices where something could rest. It is almost like no memories can remain; therefore it does not look as though it is affected by anything. Marble also has ‘veins’ but these veins are black- like dried blood which gives the impression that the life energy has been deported and left to dust.
Desarts of vast eternity. There is this image antimony, as we perceive nothing to live and if his mistress continues to resist relationship then that’s what her life will be like, tedious with nothing remarkable, with no identity.
He uses ‘worms’ eating that long preserv’d virginity’ to shock his mistress. It is a disgusting image, designed to shock.
In the third section the persona has now changed his tone from menacing and aggressive to more adventurous with ‘upbeat ideas’. Instead of having a depressed outlook on the situation he is simply saying lets not waste time but now live for moment, run away from the traditional idealistic views on life, be adventurous! ‘Now let us sport us while we may;’ He has now developed an existentialist view on what they should do as he wants her to know that he came make her happy and the best way of doing this is to forget the old fashioned rules. He states in lines 40-41 that they should join together and make the most of what they have and then to indulge in love. ‘Let us roll all our strength, and all our sweetness, up into one ball:’ He also clearly explains states that she shouldn’t give her happiness to time but to enjoy everything now. To live wholly for the moment and to taste the pleasures of her Youth while she still has a chance.
Marvell’s has a refined style... ‘Am’rous birds of prey’ is a powerful image that would possible interpret how the persona is feeling as birds of prey are very wise and determined creatures that fly through the air with a sense of pride as they know they are powerful. This could relate to the persona as he seems determined as he evidently knows what he wants ‘coy mistress’ and will do anything to get this. When he does it will be a great achievement for him as he knows that all this time and effort would have been not wasted on this one girl.
‘Sonnet’ by Elizabeth B. Browning is a romantic love poem that has an effect of love and desire in every word. The persona has her heart set on a man ‘her lover’ and she is simply in love with him. She derives such pleasure from this love that the poem almost becomes tiring to the reader as she develops a sense of child like qualities as she describes how much she loves him. ‘– I love thee with breath, smiles, tears, of all my life!’ The persona has a very spiritual view of love and is simply in love with love and there are no overt sexual references in the poem but to have someone to love and be loved in return. Her love is almost like opium - she has no resistance and no willingness to change her ideas and feelings about her lover. She believes that the love that she has for him will last for eternity and even when after her death her love will still be a part of her no matter what. ‘Shall but love thee better after death’.
The writer expresses her spiritual and true feelings in ‘Sonnet’ to create a perfect poetic form of expressing love. This is because she has structured her feelings and emotions into such a tight, compact structure of writing – the sonnet form, therefore the words are meaningful and full of strong emotion. This proven how she uses the phrase ‘I love thee’ nine times in 14 lines.
Elizabeth B.Browning’s love is expressed in this poem with a passion. This is shown by the way she counts and quantifies her love. ‘Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breath and height’. This is such a powerful concept to consider that her love is everything and she uses extreme situations as a measure of her love ‘Smiles, tears, of all my life !’ maybe naïve as she is so fast to jump to the conclusion that her love is so strong that it sums up for everything that she is. However she seems so convinced that love is there and so powerful to anything that is a concept on earth. But how can you express love if it is such a powerful and meaningful concept of life. Are there such ways of expressing love?
This emphasises how she loves him with all her heart, and it proves how much she loves him by having to count the ways in which she does on repetition of nine times ‘I love thee’, Her love felt for him is tri-dimensional; this meaning that she has three ways of loving him, ‘to the depth, breadth and height’. Also the persona expresses her love with a strong sense of passion in this poem. The strength of her writing makes the reader query her heart-felt need of love also. Even though the Sonnet is written as 14 lines, the strength is used in her words. They are affective and give images that are relevant to how she is feeling.
‘I love thee with the passion put to use’
The style induces ecstasy. It seems like she cannot stop herself and everything that she considers is appropriate to her love so inevitably the ideas are overflowing. However it seems that she cannot find the right idea of how to express what she is feeling as there are so many ideas but all lead to the opium which is her love. The persona is so narrow-minded in the sense that ‘love’ is nothing compared to anything else and all she does and thinks about is love. The images that are given off from the writer are naïve as she seems to have a solid stand in what she believes and the images prove to be a little forward or strong for the concept of the poem. Her reference to religion is so strong and her ideas are so harmonic and peaceful. She refers to the ‘Grace, candle-light, saints and God’ which all give off such a strong religious aspect of her life whether she was religious or not. The ‘ candle-light’ which is a mere reference to white light which could indicate the sense of innocence and purity is a strong image that allows the reader to reflect on her love. Her constant reference to God gives the implication that she is so conscious with her love and if God wishes to take her away ‘death’ then she will never stop loving him. Possibly she is so aware that God is all around and that he could be interference to their love.
Elizabeth B.Browning was 40 when she wrote the poem and maybe her naivety is a significant way of expressing that she is needed to be loved therefore The writers tone to the poem is so energetic and exhausting to the reader. Her usage of counting the ways to her love is so full that your mind is developing all the images that she imposes all at the same time. As you come to the end of poem it almost seems if she has done it deliberately and you feel as if you are the person who has the confusion of love.
Through focussing on both poems I have observed some contrasts and comparisons that should be highlighted in helping me to understand what effect the poems have and how they both reflect their ideas of love. Both ‘To His Coy Mistress’ and ‘Sonnet’ are poems about love. They both have their moral high ground and both have strong idealistic views on love. However they both seem to have different concepts of love as ‘To His Coy Mistress’ is to woo and seduce his mistress into falling in love with him and ‘Sonnet’ is the idea of love overthrowing everything and only love is a concept maybe the general difference is the gender aspect. With the writer of ‘To his coy mistress’ being male it may have a different agenda that he is imposing as it seems that he wants the mistress to be in love with him and he is trying to seduce her. It could be possible that a women’s view could be like this inevitably the way someone speaks and thinks depends on what is happening around them. However from looking through history it normally shows how women were said to be more reserved and to have certain decorum about how they led their lives. They weren’t expected to be rebellious and outgoing. Anything that was seen as immorally wrong or the idea that something shouldn’t be done in this way was imposed very strongly upon women and therefore it seems unlikely that a women could have wrote ‘To His Coy Mistress’.
Alternatively seeing how women have a much more relaxed situation in society today, it seems more likely that it could have been written by a women today however do men and women think differently?. So possibly Elizabeth B.Browing wouldn’t have been able to give such a strong poem as she was so involved with love in the sense that she was obsessed with her lover. However is this being quite sexist by saying women seems weaker for a woman to be so impetuous for the yearning to be loved and the vulnerability of falling in love.
Looking at the style of the ‘Sonnet’ it seems that only someone who has experienced love and been infatuated by it can only express or write the way Elizabeth B.Browning did. The idea of Browning’s poem is very religious and spiritual and the emphasis she portrays on her love for her lover as if it was almost needed to be explained. It seems that she was searching for something to say and she couldn’t really explain the strength of her love as she banters on about how she loves him to the ‘depth, breath and the height’. Browning seems to feel that she must justify her love as if it is so necessary and that she needs to prove that she really loves him. But can you really justify your love? Maybe Browning felt that it was wrong not to justify the love as it could possibly be seen as showing affection for her lover to the way someone would show their affection to a religion, to a Bible. It seems unlikely that Marvell would have been able to write something of such moralistic and religious aspects as he had a very open idea of how life should be run. His existentialism makes his way of thinking more abstract than the one of Browning’s as she has a very controlled idea of love in the sense that she is so in love that she has almost created a wall of security from it and possibly Marvell does not feel as strongly as she does. How much love does he really have for the mistress?
He seems to be more obsessed, than in love and he wants this lady so badly that he uses acts of persuasion and submissive remarks that causes the mistress to be flattered and to accidentally fall in love with him. On the other hand looking at both poems is seems quite obvious that to his coy mistress was written by a man and sonnet was written by a women. This is because stereotypical men are the alpha males, the hunter gathers and the idea that being the stronger sex they must invest in a women and to search for the right one is morally correct
Both poets use images to provide the real sense of what they are trying to explain yet both have different ways of emphasising their love. Marvell seems to use his images to the peak and by using use powerful words ‘Indian Ganges, marble, deserts’ all have different impacts in the mind however still give off a real sense of how he is feeling. The way he uses words such as ‘rubies’ to define the beauty of his mistress immediately give images of warm red colours and the richness of the colours show the beauty and the sharp edged faces of the rubies give that implication that she is important as they stand out from all the rest. Inevitably this would have made his mistress think that he must really consider her as special. However Marvell also uses images to shock and disturb both the mistress and the reader as he mentions ‘worms’ and the simple idea of worms being long, thin and scaly give the impression of a snake and the way that a worm would move almost gives a chill down the spine. Ultimately his idea of worms is to disturb his mistress as he is saying come on don’t waste the time we’ve got because before you know you will be dead and you will be in the ground and the worms will eat you and that will be the end of it.
Browning also uses images however they seem to be less effective to the imagination but still have a meaningful impact on the reader. She uses images that are very spiritual and religious and the idea of candle-light and saints shows that she has respect for her lover but also in the sight of God. Her emphasis is the love for her lover and she refers to God each time as almost as if she is looking for reassurance. As maybe she feels that it is wrong to love someone more than she loves God. Possibly she uses the emphasis on God to almost equal them out by saying ‘How do I love thee…’ yet still referring to God gives the implication that she still has faith and portraying her love could restrict her from religion.
The tones that the poets use are also very different as Marvell has different phases of how he portrays the idea of love. At first he uses flattery and coaxes his mistress He is setting her up in a false sense of security almost like placing a safety blanket down first. Then he becomes more personal and uses more aggressive, threatening and menacing tones. He does this as a shock impact to his mistress almost to trick her into falling in love with him as he balances the idea of her tepidness to the consequences that it will occur from this. He cleverly uses understatement to grip her attention and to make her think twice about what she is doing. ‘The graves a fine and private place,
But none I think there embrace’
However in the last section he proposes what the modern day reader could interpret as an existentialist view and he simply says that forget everything its time to run away from the morals and the basic traditional ideas but to go and have fun as we only live once.
Browning’s tone is very meaningful yet it is quite exhausting to the reader by the end of the sequence. She runs away with the idea of being in love with her lover and it’s almost like she’s on a high with the idea and she can’t stop saying things about her lover as she doesn’t really know where to stop and by the end she finishes the ecstasy with ‘of all my life’ and then that sums up everything yet she still has to refer to God as maybe she feels insecure about running away with the ideas that she needs to justify everything if God so wishes it to be ‘If God Choose , I shall but love thee better after death.’ Or God is an expression of the eternal.
The time periods that the poets lived in could have possibly influenced their thinking in how to react towards love. Marvell seems to forget tradition and the traditional form of the Carpe Diem and to live for the moment whereas Browning has a very moralistic view of love and its seems quite clichéd that love conquers above everything else and that it’s almost like a fairy tale that she’s fallen in love the man of her dreams. Both poems seem quite relevant to today’s society and even though they were written before 1914 they still are almost adequate to us today. Yet they also could be quite dated as the way we portray love and finding love today is more open and it isn’t really hidden but to fall in love is a major thing and no matter what, you can fall in love with anyone! The ideas of Marvell’s admiration for his coy mistress is still relevant today as we have crushes on people and maybe for no explainable reason and the idea of someone’s beauty is now more relevant than the simple fact that getting to know someone is the thing that makes a relationship work. The media have such a big impact on our ideas of what’s beautiful and what’s not. It could be possibly a propaganda tactic as it always emphasizes the slim person. The people that are naturally beautiful or maybe not but whatever it seems that in the time of Marvell and Browning is wasn’t really emphasized so much in the sense that people are sort of brainwashed or made to believe someone is beautiful.
Looking at both poems I have realized that both poems seems to convey love in very different ways yet it’s hard to single one out that could possibly be the stronger poem. The poets have very different angles of approaching love, they seem to give such strong ideas and Browning possible could have a stronger meaning for her love as she is actually more involved with love and she is showing her affection for her lover whereas Marvell seems to portray the idea that he has admiration for one girl and he is infatuated by her beauty. Yet Marvell gives a stronger argument for his love as Browning is more poignant. It comes across that Browning is quite naïve and her ways of dealing with love are so impetuous as she becomes so carried away with the fact that she is in love.
After studying both poems in depth, I prefer To His Coy Mistress to Sonnet for several reasons. Both poems are passionate however To His Coy Mistress has a broader appeal. It deals with the first stages of love and he uses wit and irony which makes it entertaining. However much he may be infatuated by this woman, he retains certain objectivity. Yet still there are dark undertones but a final powerful, optimistic message. It is because of this variety of tone that I prefer it. He takes us on a journey of surprises. Sure it’s extreme but isn’t that what sets the spirit soaring and gets the adrenaline pumping through the veins? The Sonnet contains no surprises. It does convey passion but in such a way that the reader is exhausted by the end of the poem by its intensity. Marvell is clearly in control – of himself and of the reader, Browning is at the mercy of her emotions.
The Coy Mistress is undoubtedly an amazing poem and it seems like whatever you think or feel you can still agree with his way of thinking and his constructive way of using wit, amusement and passion shows how strong he felt about his mistress. However the Sonnet also is a very endearing poem that entraps you into reading and makes you feel quite optimistic about life and it is something that you read and then afterwards you think ‘wow’. The strength of feeling is so passionate and the way she gets herself into a state of ecstasy is amazing to think that someone could really become bewildered by the power of love and it makes you think that it could possibly happen to you one day.
