British Literature Poetry Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

British Literature Poetry - Essay ExampleHerricks poem To The Virgins, To Make Much of cadence is rather short, consisting of four stanzas of four lines each. The very first line of the first stanza draws attention to the transience of childly person and beauty. Herrick exhorts the virgins to gather rose-buds while ye may, for rosebuds do not last too long. The smiling hot flash of today will, without each doubt, fade away and die tomorrow. Herrick does not have to spell out the fact that the plight of the flower should alert the virgins to their own plight-their beauty, too, is almost as fleeting as that of the flower. The second stanza, in a same vein, speaks of the glorious lamp of heaven, the Sun. The higher the suns position in the sky, the poet says, the sooner his race will be run. In ache of all the power and glory of the risen sun, the inexorable law, which decides that he thence should set, and die from the sky, will necessarily prove stronger than he. Again, Herric k does not need to remind the young virgins that this illustration is actually a metaphor to match the precarious state of their own youth and beauty.The last two stanzas express the poets meaning in a much more explicit manner. The first age of life-youth-is no doubt the best, the poet says in the third stanza, but inevitably, worsened whiles will succeed this first age, and the worst will remain in store till the end. The teeming force of the poets intention becomes clear in the message that is quite bluntly spelt out in the last stanza. Be not coy, but use your time, he tells the girls. He advises them to go marry, for, once the prime quantity of their life is past, they may perhaps ever tarry, virgins still, but not even assured of the respect which accompanies that title. Herrick presents coyness rather than its opposite as a fatal weakness or a temptation to be strenuously fought and overcome. The natural adult state is the state of marriage, and, though the poet does not use the words, he seems to regard the state of sexual union.Andrew Marvells poem To His Coy Mistress is more personal and direct, because the poem is addressed today to the poets coy mistress and not to any generalized congregation of virgins. Marvell begins with the implicit argument that the coyness exhibited by his mistress is goose egg short of criminal. It would have been no crime only if they had but world enough and time-and which young couple in the world could ever claim a surfeit of these Yet, he good-naturedly assures her that he would have been happy to fall in with her inclinations, if it were only possible. After accusing his mistress of the crime of coyness in the first couplet, Marvell uses the rest of the first stanza to enumerate how he would have gladly spent an eternity lawsuit her without any complaint, if he did have immortal time at his disposal. In an ideal situation of infinite time, he would have happily let her indulge in the luxury of refusing his l ove from around the time of Noahs flood till the Day of Judgment. If he had all the time in the world to spare, he would pronto let his vegetable love to grow vaster than empires, and more slow. He could, of course, spend the time quite agreeably. He would with the utmost pleasure, then use a hundred years to praise his mistresss eyes while gazing on her forehead. Likewise, he would impinge on two hundred years to adore each breast-but thirty thousand to the rest-at the