Digging Through "Digging"

I have to go, but I'll paste in my blog and post it later. Very sorry. Until later, my friends.

Let's Make Much of Poetry

Herrick treats in "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time", the same theme as Andrew Marvell in "To His Coy Mistress". The primary difference is one of quality: Marvell handles the theme with more depth and a greater variety of symbolism. Herrick writes a primarily pastoral poem with little humor and less variation.

He approaches the usual subject of 'carpe diem' poems: make much of the time you have, because before long you'll be old and dead. It is not exactly clear, in this poem, what the speaker hopes to get from the woman he is speaking to. (I presume it's a woman - there's not much evidence to support that, actually.) In "To His Coy Mistress" it's obvious the speaker wants a relationship, marriage, love, and of course sex. It could be, in this poem, that the speaker is simply offering advice.

The same symbolic wheel is spun over and over in this one. "Gather ye rose-buds" he says (line 1), and the flower dies in lines 3 and 4. The "sun" is getting "higher" (lines 5-6), but will soon be "setting" (line 8). "[Y]outh and blood are warmer" (line 10), but these good times will be "spent" (line 11). Over and over again, physical images of nature in bloom, then later dead, are used. In fact, you could predict the symbolic pattern of the third stanza based strictly on a close reading of the first stanza.

Though I'm sure it was important then, this one struck me as quite boring.

His Coy Blog Entry

I should say here at the beginning, I've always had a soft spot for 'To His Coy Mistress'. I first learned to like the poem largely because of T.S. Eliot's 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock', which references Marvell's poem several different times. In fact, I think I referenced this poem in several of my own adolescent attempts at poetry. But all that's aside from the point, of course, which is to discuss the poem.

The theme at work here seems to be 'life is short, get as much as you can', which is not a terrible theme. One might even go so far (gasp!) as to suggest this is the moral of the poem. Marvell explains to his lover that, if only he had a thousand years or so, his love would grow like a great slow vegetable, and that he would spend a century or so on the praise of her eyes. (And, I'd like to add, two centuries for either of her breasts.)

But he does not have a thousand years, of course, and "[t]ime's winged chariot" is "hurrying near" (line 22), so they'd better get busy. After all, her body is going to be despoiled by worms eventually, and her "long preserved virginity" (line 28) ruined. In other words, they're going to die soon enough - so baby, why not have fun now?

Perhaps this makes the poem seem one leveled, or trite, or even in bad taste. It is, of course, none of these things. These are simply the very real concerns - concerns we all have - that Marvell has chosen to write about. He clothes these 'carpe diem' sentiments in beautiful writing: unforgettable phrases like "time's winged chariot" and the opening lines themselves. He chooses humor as a platform to prevent triteness, thus we get funny rhymes like "[a]nd you should, if you please, refuse/Till the conversion of the Jews" (lines 9-10). But Marvell ultimately achieves a beautiful poignancy through his humor, specifically in the lines: "The grave's a fine and private place,/But none, I think, do there embrace" (lines 31-32).

Pure brilliance.