“Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” and “To His Coy Mistress” are metaphysical poems, and no doubt, both are love poems too. However, there is a major difference between these two poems. They are as follows: in “ Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” Donne compared the separation of lovers as departing from each other and stay away, whereas in “To His Coy Mistress,” Andrew Marvell compares the separation of lovers to death. In John Donne’s “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning,” a man is bidding farewell to his ladylove as he prepares to leave. The man’s profound love for his ladylove is apparent in the poem that explicated that the couple should not dwell in anguish when they are separated because their deep love binds them together, regardless of distance. Whereas in Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress,” time is the antagonist and sex is the tool the speaker needs to gain control over his nemesis. However, getting sex whenever you want it is no easy task.
Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” is a metaphysical poem. This poem is one of the Marvell's best poems and is perhaps the best-recognized poem. John Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” is also a metaphysical poem. In the poem “To His Coy Mistress,” the speaker accosts a woman who had been slow in responding to his sexual advances. He explains how he would love her if he were to be unburdened by the restraints of a normal lifetime. He could pass centuries admiring her and her opposition to his advances would not admonish him. He bemoans how short human life is. Once life is over, the speaker argues that the chance to relish one another is gone, as no one encompasses in death. The speaker advocates the woman to repay his efforts and contends that in loving one another with warmth, they will both make the most of the brief time they have to live. To the extent, the poem, “To His Coy Mistress,” had been accepted by everyone as a poem that followed the traditional pattern of carpe diem love poetry. The poem “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” based around the idea of two parting lovers is famous for its use of vanity and heavy emblem to describe the lovers’ relationship. There is no doubt that both the poems are love poems that they have taken the different ways of expressing and presenting the love.
In his poem, “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” Donne compared the two lovers who were departing to a death, hoping the lovers’ farewell to be calm, without clamber, and voluntary even though it is fate for them to depart. At the same time, he considered the separation of lovers to be on account to the soul departing from the body. This is not because he saw the separation of the two as permanent, like death, but that as with death, Donne found the challenge with separation to be assured the relationship’s continuity in the future. The speaker’s use of such metaphors to describe a naturalistic and cruel death appears to be a way of appalling the woman into compliance. Their love is compared to vegetable by using the phrase “vegetable love” as they wanted it to be grow vaster than the empire. The lovers are compared to “amorous birds of prey.” While comparing their love to a thin gold sheet, Donne also formulate a more perplexed comparison that their souls are same. Fundamentally, he was assuring her that if she likes to dream about their souls as two different entities, then she should conceive them like this. In “To His Coy Mistress,” the poem also pondered the custom of the titillating arms, in which a poet constructed detailed images of his lover’s beauty by carving her body into parts.
“To His Coy Mistress” is conceived that the poem is about the irony of the sexual seduction. Marvell’s poem does not contain a sober and earnest mood. The use of “refined” as a prolongation of an alchemical subject set in the earlier stanzas, with the phrase "so much refined" equivocal as to whether it is altering “love,” or the lovers themselves are being refined by the love they partake. However, Marvell’s uses composite and equivocal metaphors challenges the comprehended beliefs of the poem. It as well arouses hunch of irony and deceived the reader with its incompatible and jolting imagery. In Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress,” the speaker indicated that the woman’s coyness and reluctance would not be acceptable because they do not have “world enough and time.” However, as they are mortals, he thought that they should take vantage of their sensual incarnation while it lasts. | He told his ladylove that her beauty and her “long-preserved virginity” would become prey for worms after her death unless she gave herself to him when she was living. Rather than upholding any elevated ideals of celibacy and sexual morality, the speaker confirmed that he was adverting to their physical bodies coming together in the act of making love.
In “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” the lover is trying to persuade his beloved by using conceptual conceits, comparing their love to the most unlikely examples. Donne used a piece of gold to depict the love between the subject and the writer of the poem. While crushing and beating, the gold ever thinner diffuses it out, extending the gap between the couple. He also makes use of argumentation, striking imagery, and simple and glossy vocabulary (a few characteristics of metaphysical poetry) to console his ladylove that the separation will fortify their relationship. The analogy of a scope in the procedure of drawing a circle drew demarcations between the two lovers; despite this, the two lovers remain closely associated and mutually dependent, staying indivisible despite the raising distance between the two compass hands. As this poem is based around the idea of two parting lovers, this is famous for its use of vanity and heavy emblem to describe the lover’s relationship.
Both the poems "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” and “To His Coy Mistress” have love as their theme. The poem “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” (especially the compass analogy) attributes to love that the capability to accept various conditions without itself, varying at the same time. “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” is an example of both the concern of death that resorts Donne’s love poetry and his solemnization of sex as something sanctified. The beginning brought an analogy between the lovers’ separating and death, as, afterwards, the poem figures sex in religious partial, noting that if the lovers were to tell about their love they would unconsecrated it.
“A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” was written for Donne's wife, Ann. It was not to claim this as a love poem as most of the love poems focus on the poet’s or the speaker’s beloved. In this case, the speaker had outlay most of his time to define the nature of the love between them. The counter argument in the poem is that the real love is more powerful, insuperable. True love cannot be defeated by gap or distance. The real love never falls apart at the thought of being apart. In Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress,” the time is portrayed as the villain that persuades him to have sex before their life gets withered. With wit and daring, the speaker discusses sex in blunt, beautiful, and concerning language. Sex is an important one of those great secrets that poets never tire of researching. Marvell’s share perhaps paved the way for more open discussions of sex and sexuality.
Free Essay About Love In Poetry
Type of paper: Essay
Topic: Poem, A Valediction Forbidding Mourning, Andrew Marvell, Marvell, Death, Love, Literature, Poetry
Pages: 5
Words: 1300
Published: 03/26/2020
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