Understanding of Love in A Valediction Forbidding Mourning and To His Coy Mistress Poems - Essay Example

Likewise, the second which will be analyzed is Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”. Even though these two points were written in roughly the same timeframe, the key differential which will be analyzed is with regards to how the respective authors understand love and somewhat of an asymmetrical manner. As will be discussed within the preceding analysis, John Donne’s point focuses upon love existing outside of the con strains of time whereas Andrew Marvell’s point focuses on the immediacy, urgency, and physical necessity of love existing within the very moment.

Through an analysis and discussion of these facts, this author hopes that the reader will gain a more informed understanding concerning how love was understood in different ways by different authors; even within the same era. Firstly, with regards to Andrew Marvell’s poem, “To His Coy Mistress”, the reader can quickly come to understand that the approach that this particular poet utilizes places a profound level of emphasis and importance upon what can only be described as a “carpe diem” approach to life.

Within this particular approach, the poet encourages the Mistress to accept his sexual advances and discontinue her coy behavior. However, by much the same token, rather than merely seeking to break down the walls of seeming rejection that the woman places as an impediment for the subject to overcome, a further focus is placed upon insisting that the love and devotion that he shares for her is not as fleeting and short-lived as a mere sexual fascination. Instead, the author focuses a great deal of energy on examining the fact that even though the time to act is now and urgency, tension, and immediacy define the love and passion that the subject has for the Mistress, a more profound realization of what defines love and the eternity of passion and interest that the subject could direct for this Mistress if only she opened her heart and her body to the subject is reflected in a variety of different ways.

For instance, after the exhortation to stop dismissing the advances of the suitor, Marvell references the fact that in so doing the woman would be able to experience love as she had never before seen it. Ultimately, what is presented to the reader is an argument for the immediacy, passion, and necessity to experience love at the moment. However, because a woman would likely find the emotion of immediacy and the need to seize the day as alarming and definitive of a passing craze or crush, the poetry goes to great lengths to prove that the nature of the emotions that are being defined are not short-lived but will instead last for far longer than life itself can exist.

Using contrast, John Donne spends almost the entirety of his point discussing the fact that love does not require a public profession and easily understood emotions. Ultimately, the key difference between these two poets is with regards to the fact that John Donne’s poem focuses upon the fact that time in and of itself is unimportant to love and love exists beyond and outside of this temporal concept/construct (D'addario 421).