To His Coy Mistress By Andrew Marvell

There are two carpe diem poems that stand out from the Renaissance; To the Virgins, to Make much of Time by Robert Herrick and To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell. When broken down both poems share similarities and difference with the subject and occasion, audience and speaker, purpose, and tone of what they wrote. These poems both have the subject of love and time. The way they differ is the interpretation of the subject. In Herrick’s poem the virgins are the ones being subject to love because they don’t have time on their side. That can be concluded right away from the title “ To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time”. In Marvell’s poem the difference is that he eases into the subject sort of like a sales pitch versus being abrupt about it right away along with the entire poem being a like an invitation to
With the occasions of the poems neither one of them mentioned any specific date or time which makes them similar in that sense. In Herrick’s poem it can almost be concluded that it is during the spring because of how he talks about the roses in line one, “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may”, roses bloom in the spring. He also wrote the poem like a letter to the virgins telling them not to be shy because they won’t be young forever and time is flying by which is shown in lines two, “ Old Time is still a-flying”, line nine, “That age is best which is the first”, and line thirteen, “ Then be not coy, but use your time”. Marvell wrote this in the form of a sales pitch but he made it a description of what would happen if they had all the time in the world starting with lines three and four, “We would sit down, and think which way to walk, and pass our long love’s day.”. It continues until line twenty after he described how long he would take to examine each part of her leaving her heart for last and how his love would grow stronger for her. Marvell also wrote as an argument of why they should