Love Vs Lust Analysis

Lust or Love at First Sight?

(An analysis of the use of love or lust in John Donne’s A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, Andrew Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress, and Robert Herrick’s To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time)

“You cannot be in love with someone and not be physically attracted to them. Also, a relationship started with lust might develop into one of deep love. It works the other way as well; people might fall out of live if they realize they are no longer attracted to each other” (Thomas). During the Renaissance period, many poets were debating on the topic of love versus lust. There is much debate about whether these two words even mean to different things, or as Charles Thomas states, they have to coexist at all times. Whatever the

The main character of this poem is basically trying to seduce the girl, who is hesitant about him, to fall in lust with him. He starts off by stating that she is a precious thing that more than anything deserves to be cherished slowly and at the pace she is comfortable with. Directly after, he states the issue with her wanting to wait for the right moment, so to speak, is that time is constantly fleeting and there is not much of it left. Andrew Spacey, a poet and author, states “The argument builds up through the three sections of the poem, starting off with the speaker’s assertion that the lady’s coyness wouldn’t be deemed a moral crime if they had all the world in which to spend time together” (Spacey). Spacey is correct in stating how the speaker feels as though the couple is running out of time to develop lustful feelings. It can be easily derived from his eagerness that this poem is one about lust rather than love. The old phrase stating something about love being patient and kind is applicable here, as the man states that he wants to wait and would love to, but simply cannot make time for that due to their deaths being near. “But at my back I always hear time’s winged chariot hurrying near” (Marvell lines 21-22). It is true, that time goes rather quickly, however it is not fair to say that the speaker could not

Similar to the previous poem, this one begins with an analogy of rosebuds being plucked and then dying because they are no longer innocent and full of life. Of course this is referring to a woman’s virginity and how she can only give it away once before she is no longer desirable to men, since after she is no longer considered to be pure. This poem references time almost as much as Marvell’s poem, yet it takes into consideration all virgins and not simply his own mistress. Tom Scola, a scholar at Harvard University says about the matter, “Herrick suggests that this gift of virginity might be a great waste if not given while still desirable” (Scola). This seems to suggest that women that grow up are no longer capable of catching men’s eye and therefore are not worth anything anymore. However, since there is no way of knowing what age the girls he is referring to are, no conclusions can be drawn as to if he is correct. If the speaker was referring to younger virgins who are not even of age yet, this poem takes a nasty twist, but under the assumption that the virgins are young adults, Herrick may have some truth to his lustful poetry. “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, old time is still a-flying; and this same flower that smiles today tomorrow will be dying” (Herrick lines 1-4). Herrick is of course turning back to the fact that time does not wait for anyone and that if this