Comparison Of A Valediction : Forbidding Mourning, And To His Coy Mistress

James Fenton and Carol Ann Duffy are both contemporary poets. Their poems ‘In Paris with You’ and ‘Quickdraw’ both include the themes of the pain of love. This essay compares how the two poets present the pain of love in their poems, exploring things such as imagery, vocabulary and form and structure.

Shakespeare’s sonnet 130, “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” and Pablo Neruda’s “My ugly love” are popularly known to describe beauty in a way hardly anyone would write: through the truth. It’s a common fact that modern lovers and poets speak or write of their beloved with what they and the audience would like to hear, with kind and breathtaking words and verses. Yet, Shakespeare and Neruda, honest men as they both were, chose to write about what love truly is, it matters most what’s on the inside rather than the outside. The theme of true beauty and love are found through Shakespeare and Neruda’s uses of imagery, structure, and tone.

“Love Poem” by John Frederick Nims is an excellent of example of an author using many types of literary terms to emphasize his theme of a love that is imperfect yet filled with acceptance. In, this poem Nims uses assonance, metaphor, and imagery to support his theme of “Imperfect, yet realistic love”.

William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 116” and Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Love Is Not All” both attempt to define love, by telling what love is and what it is not. Shakespeare’s sonnet praises love and speaks of love in its most ideal form, while Millay’s poem begins by giving the impression that the speaker feels that love is not all, but during the unfolding of the poem we find the ironic truth that love is all. Shakespeare, on the other hand, depicts love as perfect and necessary from the beginning to the end of his poem. Although these two authors have taken two completely different approaches, both have worked to show the importance of love and to define it. However, Shakespeare is most confident of his definition of love, while Millay seems

Authors across time have used various relationship models in their works of writing in order to communicate their beliefs about love. By examining the relationship between two unlike brothers in his short story, “Sonny’s Blues,” James Baldwin communicates his belief that the idea of love can save people. Jhumpa Lahiri, in her short story “Hell-Heaven” also shows that the idea of love can save people, but by the end the characters are only truly happy where there is acceptance. Both Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues” and Lahiri short story “Hell- Heaven” while culturally different, use the trials and tribulations of their characters to prove that the idea of love is a saving force.

The art of poetry speaks to people through the deep meanings represented in the words of the author. These meanings are meticulously pieced together through the mind of the writer. Readers can unveil the words to find truth within the work. The truth being presented in George Gascoigne’s poem illustrates a man that has given up on love because of his past heartbreak. It’s obvious that past failed relationships have altered the speaker’s view of love. George Gascoigne utilizes metaphors in “For That He Looked Not Upon Her”, to revel the truths that are embedded in the poem.

This essay will be exploring the use of language and imagery in the poem ‘Valentine’ by Carol Ann Duffy to emphasise certain emotions within the text. This poem refers to the dark side of love and relationships several times, for example; “Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips.” This creates a different atmosphere to the stereotypical love poems, which are known for their mention of red roses and satin hearts. Although the title gives us an impression of a cliché-filled poem, as we continue reading, the poem seems like more of a warning than an encouragement to involve oneself in relationships and commitment,

Love can be quite a difficult topic to write about, expressing one’s intimate and innermost emotions requires a great level of dedication and honesty. If done correctly, the outcome is truly stunning. John Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” and Katherine Philips’s “To Mrs. M.A. at Parting” are two masterpieces of this genre. These poems depict the concept of true love so meticulously that the reader cannot help but envy the relationships presented. Perhaps the reason that these works are so effective is due to the fact that they are incredibly similar to each other. Although some differences are present when it comes to structure and gender concerns, the poems share the same theme of love on a spiritual level and show many parallels in meaning.

"Death, Be Not Proud" by John Donne, "Because I could not stop for Death" and "I heard a Fly buzz - when I died" by Emily Dickinson all have one theme in common: death. Typically, death is associated with negative connotations, but "Death, Be Not Proud" is a more cheerful tale of how death lost its sting. "Because I could not stop for Death" also has a similar theme because. Like the other two poems, "I heard a Fly buzz - when I died" talks about an interruption of a person's death by a fly. "Death. Be Not Proud," "Because I could not stop for Death," and "I heard a Fly buzz - when I died" are all poems revolving around the theme of death.

Love has a voice that speaks to everyone differently. For some people it is a gentle whisper, but for others it is a scream, yearning to be noticed. Love is a common theme in literature, discussed in many works. Love is a very broad term, that can be defined in many different ways. Love has many characteristics, with many individual interpretations. In this essay, I will be talking about three poems: Robert Graves’ Symptoms of Love, Bob McKenty’s Adam’s Song, and Muriel Stuart’s In the Orchard. Each of these poems demonstrates their own meaning of love, and each author interprets love in their own different ways.

“A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” by John Donne explores love through the ideas of assurance and separation. Donne uses vivid imagery to impart his moral themes on his audience. A truer, more refined love, Donne explains comes from a connection at the mind, the joining of two souls as one. Physical presence is irrelevant if a true marriage of the minds has occurred, joining a pair of lovers’ souls eternally.

The poem, ‘The Ecstasy” is one of the more well-known works written by John Donne. In the poem, Donne seems to agree with the philosophy that true love can only be available on a spiritual level and explains what the process is to get there. The purpose of this essay is to analyze how the poem expresses the unique ideas of love and how two people make connections through different pathways, aside from just the physical bonds.

Love makes people become selfish, but it is also makes the world greater. In this poem, the world that the speaker lives and loves is not limited in “my North, my South, my East and West / my working week and my Sunday rest” (9-10), it spreads to “My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song (11). The poem’s imagery dominates most of the third stanza giving readers an image of a peaceful world in which everything is in order. However, the last sentence of the stanza is the decisive element. This element not only destroys the inner world of the speaker, but it also sends out the message that love or life is mortal.

The poem “How Do I Love Thee”, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and “What Lips My Lips Have Kissed”, by Edna Vincent Millay are both well-known poems that both have themes of love. (LIT, Kirszner & Mandell, Pg. 490). In both poems the poet helps the reader experience a lot of emotion with the use of certain words. There are speakers in both poems. In Mrs. Browning’s poem, the speaker is undefined, leaving open that the speaker could be a he or she. Millay’s poem which is written in first person, the speaker is more defined leading the reader to believe it is a she who is talking about love in the past tense. Both poems are sonnets written with fourteen lines, and written in Italian style. When comparing these poems we will be looking at the use of rhyme scheme and metaphors and how they were used to express emotions in these two sonnet poems.

‘To His Coy Mistress’ Is a love poem by Andrew Marvel. The poem is ‘carpe diem’ which translates to seize the day, this means the poem does not take its time its blunt and straight to the point. The poem contains a thesis, antithesis and synthesis, the main argument points of the poem. The poem is split into three stanza’s which are used to persuade the woman to give up her virginity before her beauty dies. It is a conventional poem for its time in the 17th century.