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His Coy Mistress

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Andrew Marvell’s poem To His Coy Mistress falls under the genre of carpe diem because the speaker bases his reasoning for his need to sleep with her on their mortality. The speaker appeals to his mistress’s sense of devoutness by exploiting religious connotations of the words he chooses while simultaneously associating them with their limited time. The speaker takes advantage of religious phrasing to persuade his audience, his lover, to sleep with him. The narrator constructs an antediluvian timeframe to illustrate and exaggerate his devotion to his mistress. The narrator claims he would express his love for his mistress “ten years before the Flood” (8) if he had the opportunity. This reference to the biblical flood shows how long he is willing …show more content…

The narrator makes it a point to express that she has a “long preserved virginity” (28), in which he is addressing the idea that women should remain chaste until marriage. Each word in this phrase carries a strong connotation that the speaker takes advantage of. The narrator stresses the amount of time his lover preserved her virginity to illustrate the amount of time that goes wasted following these ideals. The word “long” is associated with dragging out an event unnecessarily, just as the narrator claims his mistress is doing. “Preserved” connotes an idea of something locked away, hidden. The narrator treats her virginity as the object hidden away and far from reach. The intent behind the use of this word is that he is depicting his lover as saving her virginity, possibly for marriage. “Long” adds to this scenario by making it seem as though she is elongating the time necessary to accomplish her feat. “Preserved” implies a measurable amount of wait time. It would be almost redundant to include “long” to describe the extent to which she wants to save her

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“For That He Looked Not Upon Her”, written by the sixteenth century English poet George Gascoigne, displays a complex attitude of sorrow and almost depression, which is developed through the form, diction, and imagery of the poem. This poem is written in the form of an English sonnet. It follows the “ABAB” rhyme scheme, uses iambic pentameter, and concludes with a rhyming couplet. The speaker explains that he “takes no delight” (Line 3) in looking at his lover anymore; the standard form used helps to support the speaker’s argument.

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Relationships begin based on a mutual attraction and often end due to betrayal and loss of love. Because of the end of relationship, it’s common for people to feel deceived and lament the loss of their lover. In “For That He Looked Not Upon Her,” Gascoigne utilizes a sonnet form, metaphors of the mouse and fly, and grievous diction to address the sadness and frustration of betrayal experienced in the speaker’s broken relationship. Gascoigne’s structure remains typical for the time period, but adds an opinion different from many sonnet writers of the time, addressing the negatives following an ended relationship. Through the use of a traditional sonnet, Gascoigne keeps the structure of the poem predictable and constant.

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The poem “Miniver Cheevy,” is about a man who spends his days wishing that he had been born in a different era than the one he spends his days in. Looking back on the olden days Miniver Cheevy feels that the olden days were much better than modern times and the poem goes on to show his love for the past. However, instead of doing something about his love and curiosity for the past he chooses to reminisce about the past and drink his misery away. Throughout this paper I will discuss the poem’s central purpose and its attitude towards its subject matter, and how the author uses allusion to reinforce the poems central purpose and attitude. First, I will begin with the poem central purpose or theme.

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“These violent delights have violent ends/ And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,/Which, as they kiss, consume. The sweetest honey/Is loathsome in his own deliciousness/ And in the taste confounds the appetite./Therefore love moderately. Long love doth so./Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.

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Through the words reflecting melancholy and sorrow, we can sense the narrator's self destruction due to the death of the woman he loved. As one examines the figurative language of the poem, one finds that its form and

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The narrator continues with the metaphors, explaining that their partner “fell in love” with being with them, and how the narrator does not particularly like

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The poem, “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe dramatizes the theme of everlasting love. The use of contrasting diction effectively conveys this message. For example, the speaker states, “That the wind came out of the cloud by night, / Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee” (26-26). Poe uses the wind to represent a disease, such as tuberculosis. In addition, the choice of the words, “chilling” and “killing” and the use of cacophony emphasize Annabel Lee’s death and the effect it had on the speaker.

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These almighty figures are the world’s greatest thing because they never harm humans, they don’t desire sexual needs from mortals, and they don’t expect endless gifts and sacrifices. According to the Christian bible, one of the most despicable acts a person can indulge in is adultery and lust, but when analyzing the poem, we can see that many Greek gods and goddesses partake in this shameful behavior. The eagerness of lust that Greek gods and goddesses experience humanizes them, making them closer to

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Besides the author and the reader, there is the ‘I’ of the lyrical hero or of the fictitious storyteller and the ‘you’ or ‘thou’ of the alleged addressee of dramatic monologues, supplications and epistles. Empson said that: „The machinations of ambiguity are among the very roots of poetry”(Surdulescu, Stefanescu, 30). The ambiguous intellectual attitude deconstructs both the heroic commitement to a cause in tragedy and the didactic confinement to a class in comedy; its unstable allegiance permits Keats’s exemplary poet (the „camelion poet”, more of an ideal projection than a description of Keats actual practice) to derive equal delight conceiving a lago or an Imogen. This perplexing situation is achieved through a histrionic strategy of „showing how”, rather than „telling about it” (Stefanescu, 173 ).

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“His Coy Mistress” by Annie Finch and “His Coy Mistress to Mr. Marvell” by A.D. Hope are both well-known response poems to the infamous poem, “To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell. “To His Coy Mistress” displays Marvell’s desire for some unnamed “mistress” to give him her virginity through topics such as seduction and time. These response poems are Hope’s and Finch’s replies as women or more particularly “a mistress” to Marvell’s request.

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Nerthus’s “dark juices” highlight the aesthetics of female sexuality, contrasting the repression in both Protestant and Catholic religions. By exploring the beauty of the Tollund Man and the sensuality of his sacrifice, Heaney effectively creates a lyrical and aesthetic

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