The idea and study of passing of time and shortness of life. Compare the different thoughts and emotions expressed by various Poets on this subject.

In Robert Herrick's poem, His Poetrie His Pillar, he is discussing how he is afraid that he is going to be forgotten after he is dead but he hopes that his poetry is going to last and that is how people are going to remember him. In the title it mentions "His Pillar," this could have different meanings in this line as it suggests that he could be supported by his poetry. Another way it could be suggesting that his poetry is his gravestone and that it will protect him. It could be that no matter what he will live on through his poetry and that he will never be forgotten. He wants to get across that no matter what happens you can always live on if you believe you can. In this poem the word Pillar is a big thing in this play as it can be used in different ways that in the end all add up into one solution, that he will be forgotten but really deep down he might be thinking that through his poetry he will carry on living. But in another poem he wrote To Daffadills, it is similar but mentions the same sort of things but in very different ways. As in His Poetry His Pillar he is talking about how life is short and how he is going to be forgotten, but in To Daffadills he is mainly talking about how life is short.

In the poem To Daffadills, Robert Herrick is describing how every one lives to their death and that life is short like daffodils, as their lives are short. Daffodils are born at the start of spring but then as soon as autumn comes around they die. For example is writes, "As you, or anything/ We die," suggesting that, like daffodils, sooner or later we die, but we do not know when we are going to die unlike daffodils, they die at autumn. It also states, "Faire Daffadills, we weep to see/You haste away so sooner:" which is saying that life is short and that you should not waste time and live your life to the full. The poem Virtue is different to, To Daffadills, as Virtue writes about how life is very simple, it stills talks about life being short but saying it is simple.

The poem Virtue, it is a complex poem as it is quite hard to understand. But the meaning is very easy to understand. As it talks about how life is simple. The main word in this poem is the title, Virtue; this is because it sums up the whole poem. The word Virtue means simple. The poem discusses how life is a simple process. As in the beginning paragraph it says that in the beginning everything is nice and cool but as night comes around everything dies. In the third verse it discusses how spring doesn't last long and that it ends quickly.

The structures of these poems are very different but have the same sort of language as they were all wrote in the pre 1940s. The language of these poems has an effect on the reader as it gives you an idea of what people might have been thinking as the poems are all writing the same thing. In Passing and Glassing the structure has an effect on the reader as each verse has a tense, the first verse is future, the second is present, and the last is past.

Over all, the poem Passing and Glassing, links all these poems as it writes about the past, future, and present. These poems are discussing how life is short and they mainly discuss the present and future, and what they are feeling and worries in the future. So over all this poem links them all together.