Portraying the Carpe diem Theme through Poetry Essay

The two poems, Robert Herrick’s To The Virgins, For making Much of Time and Andrew Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress, both utilize the “carpe diem” (seize the day) theme. Using both share and original imageries, they will effectively send out the communication across the reader that Time runs and retains running in order that one should take pleasure in the pleasures of love and relationship while in one’s children. However , the manners where the two poets express this kind of theme differ from each other. The tone, metaphors and other graceful devices within the two poems convey different effects towards the mind from the readers regarding how the carpe diem idea should be considered.

Herrick’s poem may be the simpler and more urgent from the two. Over the 16 lines comprising the piece, Herrick consistently paints through his metaphors the image of impending death and loss thus creating the perception of desperation in favor of his cause, which can be for the virgins, to whom he is dealing with the composition, to marry while they are really young. The images of “Old Time…a-flying (line 2) followed by a “flower (that) smiles today/ Another day will be about to die (lines 3-4)” both typify the temporariness of magnificence and youth.

In contrast, To His Coy Mistress is actually a more complex way of expounding the theme. Whilst Marvell likewise exhorts the girl, by who the poem is being addressed to, to rush and grab the available opportunities although she is continue to young, there exists a tone of hopefulness and optimism enclosed the feeling of emergency. The poet person begins by presenting hyperboles as to how he would just like his want to be—growing through time, via “ten years before the Flood…Till the change of the Jews (lines 8 and 10).

He would want to leisurely enjoy the romantic knowledge, spending “An hundred years…to praise/ Thine eyes…Two hundred or so to adore each breasts, / Although thirty 1000 to the relax (lines 13-16). ” This individual states which the reason for this is certainly that his lover “deserve this state/ Nor would I love in lower rate (lines 19-20). ” Only in the second stanza does Marvell present the carpe diem case by offering a similar personification of Time present in Herrick’s poem. In Marvell’s Time rides a “winged chariot rushing near (line 22). ” He follows this with frightening imageries of fatality such as how, if the woman keeps fighting off, in the end “worms shall try/ That long stored virginity (lines 27-28). ” This unexpected shift by beautiful loving metaphors in the first stanza to the images of loss of life in the second stanza basically makes the motif more effective and urgent towards the reader.

The shock component of death makes the young visitor consider the theme and also hurry to savor love’s delights while it is actually late. Finally, while Herrick’s poem shows that life and love is only worth it “when youth and blood are warmer/ Nevertheless being put in, the a whole lot worse (lines 10-11)”, suggesting that everything is definitely downhill after youth, Marvell thinks that love can be described as consolation pertaining to humans against the ravages of Time. The final lines, “Though we cannot help to make our sun/ Stand nonetheless, yet we will make him run (lines 45-46)”, suggest that although death is inevitable, loving can be described as way in which we can neglect thinking about senior years and fatality.

Carpe diem poems all seek to give the same communication to the target audience: to grab the opportunities within youth once in my life these are absent, they can never be reclaimed nor repeated. Herrick and Marvell the two wrote poems to illustrate this point employing varied metaphors like the personification of Time rushing by, the rising and dying from the Sun and also other temporal objects like bouquets and chickens. Herrick’s poem is the vintage carpe diem poem, recommending the reader to relish youth and make much of it because everything can be temporary, whilst Marvell incorporates an additional level about how requisitioning love during one’s children is a way to distract one by thinking about how temporary children is in one’s life.