Literary Analysis Essay on to His Coy Mistress and Death, Be Not Proud

Introduction

The Transiency of life is the major theme in the poem "To His Coy Mistress." This theme is shown through a sense of how time propels the speaker and his mistress into death before they could achieve their satisfaction in love. In the poem "Death, be not proud," the theme is the powerlessness of death. According to the speaker, death is a path to everlasting life and not something powerful or mighty.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

The speaker, or the narrator, who is Marvell in the poem "To His Coy Mistress" is a seductive lover who is seen to convince the mistress who is a perceived virgin to love him (Marvell and Andrew.6). Also, in the poem "Death, be not proud," the narrator talks of death as powerful and dreadful since it kills everybody, although the poet contradicts this by saying that death is not powerful because people continue living even after dying. There is the setting of the readers' imagination, and there is the setting that could have been had imagined by the speaker in the poem "To His Coy Mistress". In the poem "Death, be not proud," the setting is profound on the meditation of death (Marno & David.15). The speaker challenges the powers of death because eternal life awaits humans even after dying.

The first imagery in the poem is where the speaker identifies a time as an enemy. The imagery that is related to death is used as a way to emphasize that in addition to time, the reality of grave is also an impending enemy. There is also imagery when the speaker calls the mistress to action as they could try to win victory over time (Marvell and Andrew,6). In the poem" Death, be not proud," death is liked to pride, pretense, and inferiority negative human characters. Also, the poet uses imagery when he suggested that death was just like sleep (Marno & David.15).

The speaker in the poem "To His Coy Mistress" uses different tones like satire, affection, bitterness, passion, and lust to con the mistress into obeying his advances (Marvell & Andrew.7). For example, there is a satirical tone when the speaker said that they would spend two hundred years adoring each other's breasts. This time was twice the time he suggested he would spend to adore her forehead. The tone in the poem "Death, be not proud" is joyful and faithful at the beginning, although it turns somewhat dark at the end, which tries to show some truth about humanity (Marno & David.15).

The poet of the poem "To His Coy Mistress" uses irony to show the will of the speaker to his unwilling lover (Marvell & Andrew.7). This is ironical because the speaker knows that the lady would not stay but uses exaggeration to persuade her to love him. While in the poem "Death, be not proud," the narrator's suggestions of "death as mighty and dreadful" is ironical because the poet argues that death is not powerful and it is a transition from one state of life to another (Marno & David.16).

Works Cited

Marvell, Andrew. " To His Coy Mistress" and Other Poems. Courier Dover Publications, 2016:6-8.

Marno, David. Death Be Not Proud: The Art of Holy Attention. University of Chicago Press, 2016: 15-18