Compare The Treatment Of The Themes Of Love And Time In The poems To His Coy Mistress And Sonnet 18.

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Compare The Treatment Of The Themes Of Love And

Time In The poems To His Coy Mistress And Sonnet 18

When reading the two poems I found that To His Coy Mistress and Sonnet 18 are both very well structured.  The authors Andrew Marvell and William Shakespeare show their views very well.  The points they showed were love, life and death.  

The author of ‘To His Coy Mistress’ Andrew Marvell shows and uses a persuasive argument.  A persuasive quote such as ‘let us sport us wile we may’ means let us do it while we have the opportunity.  Shakespeare however is trying to immortalise the beauty of his love and the true amount of love he shows for him.  Shakespeare on the other hand wants to ‘suck up’ to his love.

The two poems I have studied both have reference to time and love.  Shakespeare writes his poem using romantic love.  However, Marvell uses a different kind of approach and uses passionate love as his base.  When Shakespeare writes his he describes and praises his lover.  This lover is to be found as a young man.  Compared to Shakespeare, Marvell’s poem is based around his lover.  He is creating an image of her but not describing her.  Shakespeare is trying to show that his lover is out of anyone’s reach, Marvell doesn’t get this point across to the reader.  In sonnet 18 one part reads, ‘thy eternal summer shall not fade’. This shows that his lover, who was a young man is not going to go and will always be there for him.  To His Coy Mistress has a part which reads ‘tear our pleasures with rough strife/ Through the iron gates of life’, this highlights that they should make the most of time.

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Andrew Marvell ‘To His Coy Mistress’ argues he would accede with his loved one’s every demand, but at this stage time and death don’t allow this.  At the end of his poem there is a final rhyming couplet which helps sum up the argument and this is, ‘Thus, though we cannot make our son/ Stand still, yet we will make him run’.

Sonnet 18’s final two lines is a rhyming couplet. ‘So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,/ so long lives this, and this gives life to thee’.  It emphasises that Shakespeare has made up ...

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