Seizing the Day

Paper Summary:

This paper compares Andrew Marvell?s ?To His Coy Mistress? to Robert Herrick?s ?Corinna?s Going A-Maying.? It contains examinations of both speakers, their intentions, their desires, and their rhetorical approaches/seduction strategies. It also explores possible differences between the speakers? mistresses, the addressees, and the ways in which the speakers? words reveal their respective perceptions of their mistresses. It shows how, although both speakers focus on the same basic themes (seizing the day and the transience of life), the vast differences in their rhetorical approaches and linguistic choices reveal different perceived obstacles to their goal (seduction) and different hesitations on the part of their mistresses.

From the Paper:

"Both Marvell and Herrick's speakers believe in seizing the day and making the most out of life; they recognize its impermanence and therefore wish to fulfill their desires in the present, likening human existence to fleeting nature. After explaining to his mistress that he would love her eternally but that their time is limited, Marvell's speaker insists: "Now therefore, while the youthful hue/Sits on thy skin like morning dew" (33-34) they should submit to their desires. This description emphasizes the transience of his mistress's youth by likening her young skin to morning dew, which appears only briefly at dawn and vanishes in the full light of day. He continues: "Now let us sport us while we may,/And now, like amorous birds of prey,/Rather at once our time devour/Than languish in his slow-chapped power" (36-40)."

More papers on Seizing the Day:

• Book Review # 95750 : "'Seize the Day'"
• Poem Review # 106939 : "Carpe Diem" - Seize the Day!"
• Comparison Essay # 32680 : " "To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time"

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