WHO SO LIST TO HOUNT I KNOWE WHERE IS AN HYNDE

Context

• Written by Thomas Wyatt, a courtier under Henry VIII

• Is strongly suspected to be about Anne Boleyn, and Wyatt’s forbidden love for her

• The renaissance marked the golden age of humanism, hence the classical references in the poem.

  • The myth of Actaeon: Actaeon was a Greek hero (Theban to be exact) who saw the virgin goddess of hunting, Artemis, naked. For this reason, he was turned into a stag and mauled to death by his own hounds. The most famous retelling of this is from Ovid’s ‘Metamorphosis’, which outlines some of the most famous transformations in Greco-Roman mythology.

  • Ovid was famous for his parodic and politically weighted poetry, and following his publication of ‘Ars Amatoria’ (or ‘The Art of Love’ in English), which defied the Julian laws set out by the Emperor Augustus regarding promiscuity in the Roman empire, he was exiled. This may relate to Wyatt’s one possible animosity with Henry VIII on account of his secret love for Anne Boleyn.

  • Octavian, the emperor during Ovid’s time, branded himself as Augustus Caesar, perhaps linking to the mention of ‘Cesar ’as the owner of the ‘hynde’.

• Lyric poem - this genre was pioneered as THE genre of love poetry by Sappho in the Aeolic Greek period.

• It is spelled so badly because they did not have standardised spelling at Wyatt’s time of writing.

Content

The persona (probably Wyatt) tells the reader that if he wants to pursue a love, he knows where he can find one. He has taken on this ‘vain travail’, but has long since given up, ‘wearied’ by the journey and has failed to capture this seemingly impossible lover. He then warns the reader tat if he attempts the hunt, he will fail, because catching this lover is like trying to catch the wind in a net (‘I leve of therefore/Slithens in a nett I seke to hold the wynde’). This is because she belongs to someone else, a ‘Cesar’, and is wild, though she seems ‘tame’/.

Analysis - form and structure

• The poem is an Elizabethan sonnet - typical of love poetry and highlighting the strength and trueness of the persona’s love. However, perfection of it may also be ominous: true devotion is often messy and imperfect, in fact, one could argue that this is what truly makes love worth it i the first place. This could suggest that the persona is idolising the object of the poem and that his love is instead dangerous, absolute obsession.

• Perfect rhyme scheme in quatrains with a couplet at the end - links to the above. He has steadily loved her, but what if this is out of obligation to a dream, not a real person.

• The final couplet is indented and merged together - certainty in the persona’s position, immovability of both his dream and the circumstances preventing him from it. He exists in a state of perpetual longing.

• The first line begins with a trochee - it still fits the rhythm, but stumbles, perhaps suggesting that while the persona has come to terms with the unattainability of love, his soul protests this; he has not stopped longing, and has given up on hope, not love: the two are not necessarily synonymous.

Analysis - language

• ‘hynde’ - deer, vulnerability, but also wildness. Is it her wildness that makes her vulnerable? Her wildness that makes the persona want to ‘hount’ her? Or maybe her vulnerability is appealing. Similarly, the fact that this is clearly a metaphor for a women, this creates the image that women have no autonomy and that their feelings are less than human. The ‘hynde’ is always placed as the object of the sentence, supporting this point.

  • Contrasted by the fact that she is not vulnerable because she is protected by another man - what does this mean?

  • In presenting the persona’s lover as a deer, Wyatt is perhaps subverting the myth of Actaeon (see context notes above), suggesting that it is the lover who is being punished and presenting himself as the hounds that tear her apart. This may suggest that the persona is aware that his love will destroy his lover, and unlike the hounds, he has the humanity to stay away from her. However, Artemis herself is often portrayed as a doe in Greek symbolism, perhaps suggesting that the lover is putting himself in danger, ignoring her unattainability?

• ‘vayne travaill’ ‘helas, I may no more’ - grandiose language. Subconscious attempt to match intellectually what his lover’s ‘owner’ has in wealth. Value of intellectualism over monetary goods?

• ‘weried mynde’ - love is exhausting and has a psychological toll on the lover. Is this only when it is not reciprocated?

• ‘Slithens in a nett I seke to hold the wynde’ - predatory image of the net, but also of futility. He knows it is futile, but he kept going for so long, perhaps because he could not picture what his life would be like without the chase. Also - juxtaposition of human behaviours (the net, fruitless pursuit) with nature. Does he consider his lover to be beyond humanity? Is this why he wants her? Can be used in a pattern of evidence with her description of a ‘hynde’, she is beyond his comprehension. Beyond human comprehension.

• ‘graven in diamondes in letters plain’ - juxtaposition of ‘diamondes’ and ‘letters plain’. Perhaps words are stronger than wealth, linking to the above ideas? The persona’s genuine affection is greater than that of the owner’s?

• ‘Noli mi tangere for Cesars I ame’ - lack of autonomy on the behalf of the ‘hynde’ linking to ideas of female objectification (see above). The Latin also seems pretentious and grand, like the diamonds, but falsely so: it is an instruction from a world that has long since died.

• ‘And wylde for to hold though I seme tame’ - contradicts the message of the poem that women can be controlled. Does this suggest that her innocence is a protective front?

Links to Gatsby

• The persona is pursuing the lover as if she were a prize, dehumanising him. In the way, the ‘hynde’ in the poem is the same as Daisy’s synonymy with the Green light. He has become blinded by the metaphor and no longer remembers what real love feels like.

• The appeal of the lover is that she is forbidden: Gatsby gets a thrill from the elaborateness of pursuing Daisy, hence the elaborate parties and excessive wealth. Perhaps he sees this as a competition and idea for victory over Tom, to be a victor in a game otherwise denied him (‘some irrevocable football game’). The ‘hount’ is the renaissance equivalent of this, perhaps.

• Wealth as perhaps an appeal - the issue is not that the ‘hynde’ is not that she is collared by someone else, but that the bounds are expensive: the collar around the ‘hynde’s’ neck is made from ‘diamondes’ with an inscription in Latin, not the plain English of the poem. Similarly, Gatsby sent daisy a letter, whereas Tom gave her a pearl necklace, representing the divide between them. The persona - and Gatsby - perhaps want something more exotic than themselves, to be included in that upper class unattainable to them by birth.

• ‘wylde… though I seme tame’ - this links to Daisy. Daisy is seen as the perfect wife for Tom and Gatsby’s lover, but she is cleverer than that. She resents her place, and though she conforms to society, it is for her own self preservation, and she hates it (e.g. the ‘hulking’ scene of childish defiance that symbolises that her perpetual innocence is at the sacrifice of her maturity and that, at heart, she is but a child that wants desperately to grow up. This could mean that she uses Gatsby and his dream of their relationship in order to feel alive, to move beyond society’s parameters and false innocence.).

SONNET 116

Context

• Written in 1609 by William Shakespeare and one of his most famous sonnets, written in the last decade of his life.

• Jacobean, rather than Elizabethan, but still very much within the Renaissance

• Some scholars believe Shakespeare was queer, and this sonnet may evidence that.

Content

The persona lays out what he believes to be the definition of love: it is unchanging, unbreakable and does not stop for time or circumstance. It is, perhaps, the only eternal thing we have left in our universe, and it is borne of our own hearts.

Analysis - form and structure

• Elizabethan/Shakespearean sonnet, in which the worlds flow easily. This suggests that the form of love Shakespeare is suggesting is as natural as breathing, as speaking normally. When he speaks of love, his words form sonnets, perhaps suggesting that poetry is the truest representation of love, and the two are inherently intertwined.

  • If poetry is the truest expression of love, what should that mean? That love is transcendental of normal speech? Or perhaps that that is why Shakespeare writes poetry in the first place.

• Enjambment and caesura allow the poem to keep its sonnet/ iambic pentameter rhythm, but feels like natural speech (see above points). The pauses are targeted, and the poem ebbs and flows, making it sound like both a passionate outpouring and

• Three ABAB quatrains and a couplet at the end. Again, perfect form

• Iambic pentameter - the traditional expression of love and sounds like a heartbeat - love will continue for as long as his heart beats, and poetry is written ‘if this be error and upon me proved/ i never writ, nor no man ever loved’

Analysis - language

• ‘let me not to the marriage of true mindes/ admit impediments’ - marriage both a union of souls and a legal contract. If this is a marriage of minds, not hearts, is it truly romantic? This is a weak interpretation, because everything else in the poem suggests to the contrary.

• ‘love is not love’ ‘alters when it alteration finds/ or bends with the remover to remove’ - the language doubles back over itself: love is so vast it is ineffable, incalculable to poetry. Poetry may be an expression of love, but it is through medium and the love and care put behind those words that makes it special, not the words themselves. Love can be defined, more than anything, by what it is not.

• ‘the star to every wandring barke’ - a common metaphor, love as a guiding light. Ships were important to the Elizabethans, highlights the gravity of their love, but also how love interweaves with the world around them, contemporary and eternal all at once.

• ‘Lov’s not times foole’ ‘love alters not with his breefe houres and weekes/ But bears it out even to the edge of doome’ - another reference to the eternal endurability of love. Love dies only when you do. This suggests that love is a very human commodity, and that our humanity is defined by our ability to love, but we have autonomy in whether we live in a heaven or a hell.

  • ‘doome’ - why not just say death? To describe death, and the end of live, as ‘doome’ highlights its importance: love is all we have that separates us from Hell. Heaven and hell are both run by deities, but Earth exists between the two, poised depending on your perceptions =of that. If you let love slip away or live without it, you are perpetually set back from happiness. TL;DR love = heaven. Perhaps love is a religion unto itself?

  • ‘doome’ may also refer to the possible homoerotic subtext within the poem. More than an explanation, it at times feels more like a defiant justification. It is not complex or grandiose in language or structure, but its simplicity is what makes it to effective. Perhaps, it is therefore a plea for acceptance: love does not bend to time or circumstance, it simply exists as something beautiful. This is implicitly inclusive of queerness.

  • The fact that Love is ‘not times foole’ suggests the importance of love, but also that there are things in this universe that do adhere to temporal limitations. Love is, in this case, transcendent of mortality, and though it is created by humans, the effects of that last for so much longer. This links into the importance of poetry: Shakespeare and his lovers are long gone, but this poem remains as a fragment of a past that we all experience. Love is not one thing felt by one person, but a force that is borne from us but also unto us.

• ‘within his bending sickles compasse come’ - this is one bit of very unclear language in an otherwise clear poem. The sibilance her slides over the tongue, like life slipping away, but gently. The only thing as powerful as love in this world is loss, but are those two things really so different? The feeling of loss perhaps is only felt because of love, and maybe we only love because of the finite nature of it (see links to Gatsby).

• ‘if this be error and upon me proved/ i never writ, nor no man ever loved’ - a paradox and rhyming couplet. Love marries reality with idealism, possibility with impossibility. It is both ineffable and is defined by what it is not. All in all, it is a commodity that does not make sense, yet we all understand it because it is inconceivably there, present within ourselves and in the very essence of our vitality. This quotation is also significant because of the references to poetry. It is a running theme that love is expressed in this sonnet because it is the only way: love is endowed within everything we give time and devotion to. (not relevant but this is also true in the poetry of Sappho, something to think about for reception questions in A-level classics)

Links to Gatsby

• The poem so effortlessly relays its perceptions of love, but Nick never truly manages that in 200 pages. His descriptions become more ornate and his language adopts flourish after flourish, but in fourteen lines, Shakespeare in plain language is able to achieve the impossible. Nick and Gatsby are obsessed with the idea of love; the societal ideal

• Queer reading may link to the homoeroticism between Nick and Gatsby. It is something only really present in subtext, almost as if Nick is reluctant to admit it. Gatsby’s fixation on Daisy and the idea of love that they share is a fabrication to distract him from himself. This is why it feels so staged - the parties, the extravagance, even the fake names. He has been brainwashed not only into ideas of class, but how love should evolve, and the two become intrinsically linked. The relationship between Nick and Gatsby can be defined by the fa t that none of them want to speak it, just how love in ‘Sonnet 116’ is defined by what it is not.

• Maybe the fact that Gatsby lost Daisy is why he wants her: he is so desperately aware of the finite amount of time he had with her that he wants to prolong the past, as if that will make the love stronger. But as beautiful as they are, memories are only memories, and if not renewed, they may go stale, or become warped. Gatsby refuses to accept the cyclical nature of love and loss, and becomes unhealthily stagnant in his perceptions of her to the point where he hardly knows what love is anymore. True love is the acceptance of its paradoxical eternity and finiteness.

THE FLEA

Context

• John Donne was a metaphysical poet known for his outlandish and often crude poetry, hidden behind clever intellectualism and wit. ‘The Flea’ is one of the best examples of this

• He was also a priest, hence some of the religious imagery and references to sacraments, virtues and sin in his verse. His brother was convicted of trying to hide Catholics escaping persecution.

• The imagery of a flea would have been a particularly grotesque one, as the Black Death had made another round of London shortly before its publication. Fleas were carriers of disease, and though the science behind it was still very much in its infancy, it was clear that wherever fleas went, so did the plague.

• ‘The Flea’ was written by his cynical persona ‘Jack Donne’, which absolved him of some of the responsibility for his radically hedonistic themes.

• He was an absolute slut.

Content

The persona tries to convince a woman to have sex with him, using the metaphor of a ‘flea’ to illustrate how having sex will do no harm, and is not actually a dirty act. Though we do not hear the woman’s perspective, we understand that the persona is being rejected, and is being very obnoxious about it. It is almost comical to observe his increasingly stupid attempts to convince her. While the first stanza simply outlines his (comically idiotic) argument, the second begins with a frantic ‘O stay’, indicating that the women has had enough and is trying to leave. The third stanza suggests that the woman has squashed the flea, and has symbolically rejected him in finality, killing him brutally and justifiably, his pursuits nothing more than a dirty, disease ridden (possibly literally) insignificance.

Analysis - form and structure

• The poem has a frequent motif of threes: three stanzas, each of which ends in a triplet. Three. There are also three characters within it: the man, the woman and the flea. Given Donne’s religious background and literary tendency to parody religious imagery, it is likely that this is a reference to the Christian Holy Trinity (the father, the son and the holy ghost). This perversion of what is perceived as holy may be a means of undermining the church: love in itself is a religion, but is truer than the trinity because it encompasses all of human nature, not just the sacramental perfection of it. Real humanity is messy, flawed and often disgusting, and Donne is celebrating that.

  • This could also be a means of addressing hypocrisy in the church: if the church can extort money and preach messages to their onw favour, how is that any different from sex? What defines purity? The woman is clearly not listening, and Donne’s persona is in the wrong. If the persona represents the church, twisting the doctrines of something beautiful into something as disgusting and disease-ridden as a flea, who are they to blame the public who reject their doctrines. Shouldn’t we have the right to choose, rather than being domineered by the institutions that call authority their own?

• There is also the consideration that the power of three is a literary technique observed first in the Homeric epics: we describe things in groups of three because they feel powerful. This ay connote to the power the man holds over the woman, and how she takes that back, even without speech by rejecting his advances: power exists because of our submission to the systems of oppression, an Donne is calling for an intellectual revolution. A hundred years after his death, the age of enlightenment would begin.

• The prevalence of threes is also significant seeing as love is usually about a couple. Why is this third person, or entity there? Is love sentient? Is it symbolic of authority and convention invading the sacred? Something else?

• The transfer of power with no clear volta suggests that change is a gradual thing, and something that naturally grows. From this perspective, the poem seems almost hopeful in its exploration of change and agency. If the flea can be quashed with a thumb, perhaps the thing that holds so much power over us can also be destroyed by living beyond the parameters of institutional power.

• The poem rejects the typical sonnet form, suggesting that it is not a love poem, but a political one, or that it is a perversion of love. See above, because I think I’ve covered this enough.

• Written in iambic tetrameter , then pentameter - divergence from iambic pentameter, and more of a singsong mocking, yet still carrying traces of convention. Symbolic of the necessity to transform convention? OR that a transformation of convention brings about the flea? All thesame, it is irregular, but lilts together all the same: is it supposed to

Analysis - language

• ‘it sucked me first and now sucks thee’ - this is very crude imagery, made still cruder by the fact that the typeface of poetry at the time would have made ‘suck’ written with a ‘long s’: ‘ſ.’, making ‘suck’ look like ‘fuck’. This childish humour stands out as an act of defiance, not from intellectualism, but from innocence. ****The church (or another authority - society? This could link to Gatsby!!) has suppressed that childishness in them and now it bubbles to the surface. Innocence is quintessential to intellectualism and our freedom to be as children are is a beautiful thing. There is also the irony of this innocence being associated with something as typically crude and hedonistic as sex.

• References to ‘sin’ connote to the religious subtext already explored in the structure. Is sex a sin, desire a sin? Or does it just refer to succumbing t desire, something ironic give the fact that it is the man experiencing arousal and the woman showing complete disinterest. Shows the hypocrisy of both society and the gender binary.

• ‘loss of maidenhead’ - references to virginity, but trivialises it. To the man, this encounter is nothing but a brief pleasure, but to the woman, it is so much more. Virginity is symbolic of innocence (this is referenced later in the poem, as her squashing of the flea is likened to ‘blood of innocence’), but also of autonomy. If she has sex with this man, she loses part of her identity: it is stolen from her parasitically, like a flea sucks blood and leaves you riddled with disease and pain. The framing of it as a ‘loss’ also signifies the grief associated with it: if she loses her virginity, part of her dies with it. Is this her childhood? Her identity? And to what extent are the two one and the same? Is there such a thing as perpetual innocence, and if there is, is that healthy? (See Gatsby notes!!)

• ‘this enjoys before it woo’ - reference to sex before marriage. Is the ‘flea’ the literal embodiment of this? And does this therefore suggest that if one does engage in premarital sex, it is a mark against the soul, as the flea mars the body physically? This links to the perversion of the Holy Trinity discusses in the previous section. OR: in pressuring the woman into premarital sex, the persona becomes a parasite in himself.

  • This could also just be a reference to his boner.

• ‘And pampered swells with one blood made of two’ - very erotic imagery, but notably of male arousal, not female. It is ‘one blood’ after all, suggesting that he is sexually attracted to her, but she remains indifferent. This is also quite radically explicit, particularly within the religious context of the poem, and serves as a jarring, mildly disgusting bit of humour to draw the reader in and to make them laugh. It is an simultaneously intoxicating and revolting mockery of society and male desire.

  • ‘one blood made of two’ represents the union made by sex, a possible metamorphosis but also a divergence from the theme of three.

• ‘And this, alas, is more than we would do’ - the persona’s attempt at humour: he is implying that even fleas have a greater sex life than him, which, though it is self deprecation, serves to shame the woman for her refusal. This turning of male fault onto a woman with autonomy may be another dig at the double standard presented by the gender binary. This insertion of humous as a means of dealing with serious topics is also very typical of Donne’s poetry, and leads us to debate about the role of humour in storytelling and communicating themes: Would ‘The Flea’ be as impactful a poem without humour? Likely not, because in embracing humour, we expose the weaknesses in things: institutions like the church and gender roles and sin and sacrament are heavily endowed with seriousness, and people do not criticise them because of this. Yet when tou make jokes about something, you expose that they are not infallible, or available to observe through just one lens. They are just ideas constructed by us and can be interpreted in a myriad of different ways. Donne’s poem strips away stigmas surrounding sex and holiness while also communicating a serious message, and that is a very powerful thing.

• ‘O stay, three lives in one flea spare’ - the woman is beginning to lose interest now, and he looks like a fool, the conceit of the flea now openly ridiculous.

• ‘our marriage bed’ ‘cloistered in these living walls of jet’ ‘sacrilege’ - more religious imagery, but imagery that confines. Religion a prison, but also marriage and sex. Once she has had sex with this man, she will be barred from her childhood, and it will be taken from her. Societal norms ensure this.

• ‘make you apt to kill me’ ‘self murder’ - use of plosives becoming more aggressive now, and also putting the blame unto the woman. This is also a double entendre for male orgasm (an archaic term for orgasm is ‘petit mort’ or ‘small death’, which morbidly ties in with the themes throughout this poem and also ruined that Hozier song for me)

  • Death being synonymous with orgasm has a lot of connotations (I’m so sorry for this): Death is a release from society in a slightly disgusting way? Or that sex is the result of the death of the church? And a myriad of more disgusting implications that I will not be submitting to an A-level examiner.

• ‘three sins in killing three’ - theme of three again and a subversion of the guilt of losing virginity: the man is trying to pressure her into having sex by accusing her of ‘killing’ him if she does not. This is a dichotomy that we have touched on before, but has never been direct enough to address.

  • Women are poised between two extremities: the wills of the church and the wills of men who wish to abuse them. It is an impossible choice, and the only escape from that is for them to gain autonomy, in crushing them. When the woman crushes the flea in the final stanza, it is the only escape from this flawed system. This is contrasted in Gatsby.

• ‘Cruel and sudden, hast thou since/ purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?’ - the woman crushes the flea! As previously stated, this is a symbolic rejection of the persona’s advances and brings the power back to her. She kills the parasite, revealing the man to be that and that alone, easily crushed if we take a stand and collectively reject the norms thrust upon us as if they were as disgusting as fleas. This is also very violent imagery, which is atypical of presentations of women in seduction poetry.

  • Irony of ‘innocence’ being used to describe sex - links to the satirical nature of the flea and how the man’s behaviour is meant to be perceived as shocking

• ‘Wherein could this flea guilty be/ except in that drop which it sucked from thee?’ - trivialises the significance of her virginity (again), but also poses a question through a front of humour: what is virginity, if not a social construct? Should we pedestalise it? Does it only have significance because it is something for men to take away from women, because it is the only form of identity they are allowed? Good satire should have elements of truth behind it, and Donne is its master.

• ‘as this flea’s death took life from thee’ - insinuation that she is the one losing out by refusing to have sex with him, which plays into the satire of a clueless, imposing man, but also creating an ominous ending to an otherwise humorous poem.

• There is an absolute lack of female voice throughout the whole poem, but the woman’s actions are what define it. Women have to be powerful through actions not words, and erasing them in language does not mean they have no power.

• Is the ‘flea’ a metaphor for God? It lies at the heart of biblical imagery, suggesting that love and desire transcend humanity and can be found at te heart of existence. Is God/the church, like the flea, diseased and rotten to the core?

Links to Gatsby

• Like the woman in the poem, Daisy is caught between two worlds: Tom and Gatsby. One represents society and the life she feels obligated to live and enjoy, and the other represents selfish release, a man desperate to use her as a prop in his fantasies (Gatsby). Yet while the woman in ‘The Flea’ is able to find a way out in rejecting both those norms, Daisy falls short, returning back to her comfortable life once the consequences of reality hit in the form of the car crash. She fails to escape the world and continues to conform, comfortable in her unhappy oppression.

  • However, one could argue that the woman in ‘The Flea’ does not escape at all, and merely rejects the persona in the same way Daisy runs from Gatsby. She returns to innocence and virginity and what is expected of her by society and the church.

• Lack of female voice throughout the poem links to Daisy’s lack of voice. Instead, she - and Myrtle - are forced to take petty revenge, whether that be through the ‘hulking’ scene or through Myrtle’s drunken outburst of Daisy’s name that ends in Tom slapping her: ‘Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!’. Daisy is also forced to curb her comments and true emotions, dressing in white to outwardly project the ideas of femininity she is supposed to embody. Femininity is a prison for her, as it is for the woman in the poem, but these constructs also affect men as well. The flea itself is not dirty, but it carries disease as part of its role in society. From this perspective, male desire is not dirty, but has been perverted by social expectations of which men become parasites, propelled by the patriarchy to the top, where they inflict harm on all that is beneath them.

• Unwanted advances: Gatsby is the man and Daisy the woman who resists him. From this perspective, their love is repugnant and unwanted, hinting at the darkness that will spill from it later in the book.

TO HIS COY MISTRESS (WORLD ENOUGH AND TIME)

Context

• Written by Andrew Marvell, a metaphysical poet educated at the University of Cambridge who was a contemporary of John Donne

• Active during the English Civil War, and although he initially disliked Cromwell, his admiration of him grew as time went on

• ‘THCM’ published posthumously in 1681, after the reinstating of the monarchy in 1660

• His father drowned in the River Humber, which cut short his time at Cambridge

• He kept disappearing off the face of the earth for months at a time, leading some critics to suspect that he may have been a spy.

Content

A syllogistic argument in which a man tries to convince a woman to sleep with him. He argues that time is finite, so they should have sex now, while they are still young and able. The poem begins with him lightly chiding the women for her ‘coyness’ and telling her of all the things they could do if they had eternity to do so, including all of the ways he would admire her body. In the second stanza, there is a volta, where he expresses that life is, unfortunately, finite, and that soon they will both be old, and then dead, and they will have wasted all that time when they could have been having fun (sex) with each other. The final stanza abandons the morbidly comical imagery of death and adopt a passionate carpe diem attitude, urging the woman to seize the moment and revel in it, for they cannot stop time, but they can enjoy it as much as they can: ‘Thus, though we cannot make our Sun/ Stand still, yet we will make him run.’

Analysis - form and structure

• The poem is split into three stanzas and is structured as a syllogistic argument:

  • Syllogistic argument - a process of logic in which two general statements lead to a more particular, specified one. In the context of ‘THCM’, statement one is the persona’s admission that he would spend eternity with the woman if he could, statement two is that the woman will grow old and die. The conclusion is that the woman should have sex with the man before time runs out. This is certainly a resolution of the argument, but philosophy is not something that can be put in an equation to find an answer. Two statements that are independently true do not mean that the result of them is set in stone. This makes the persona’s argument reductive, and can be read as satire

• It has three stanzas, which relates to the above analysis, but also has the idea of phases: the poem goes through a metamorphosis, of unawareness to damning realisation to the conclusion that it is the moment that matters. It is almost as if the reader goes tho=rough every stage of grief in a single poem, or a life cycle - ?

• The whole poem is written in perfect iambic tetrameter and rhyming couplets it is relentless, like the march of time, a constant heartbeat through life and realisation that ceases for no-one. Furthermore, it does not even falter at death, but keeps going, symbolising how time will continue apathetically even after we are gone.

• The rhyming couplets are typically romantic, and give the poem an eloquent rhythm.

Analysis - language

• ‘World enough , and Time’ - this has become a famous phrase that has made its way into other media since Marvell’s first use of it, including an episode of Doctor Who. The episode outlines time passing at different rates as a ship drives away from a black hole, and the Doctor is too late to save his companion from the eternity she endures within seconds of his own life. In short, the phrase has become shorthand for the recognition that the time he have on this earth is finite, and it can snatch live from us until our own lives feel meaningless without it.

• Frequent geographical references in the first stanza - very typical metaphysical technique.

• ‘ten years before the Flood’ ‘Till the conversion of the Jews’ - religious imagery helps to illustrate the scope of the love and time available to them, but love becomes more important. Love becomes its own religion in itself, and why would we require a god is we had eternal love? Perhaps this suggests that the reason we do have a God is because we need something eternal to hope for in a world where our chances are limited by our mortality. God is our representation of the indefinable thing we call love personified as an institution, the representation of everything beyond us that is ineffable.

• ‘My vegetable Love should grow’ - this is a reference to his boner. The poem now diverges from its façade of grandeur and metaphysical concepts, its pretence of philosophy to reveal what it truly is: a man being horny and talking about his dick.

• ‘Vaster than Empires, and more slow’ - he is colonising her? More sinister intentions begin to show here: He does not care about her, only to have her. This is furthered by the fact that he does not talk about her personality, but her body: ‘An hundred years should go to praise/ Thine eyes, and on Thine Forehead Gaze/ Two hundred to adore each Breast/ But Thirty Thousand to the rest’. This is a continuation of his ‘vegetable love’. This poem is about sex, and how men want nothing else from women.

• This is contradicted slightly, but almost as if it is an afterthought: ‘the last Age should show your Heart’- once they have had sex, then he will get to know her, but he has shown his priorities.

• ‘Lady, you deserve this state’ - almost courtly, Arthurian. Treating the lady in a medieval capacity. IAs this complimentary or condescending? How does our modern perspective alter this view?

• ‘But at my back I alwaies here/ Times winged charriot drawing near’ - this is the first really interesting metaphor of the poem, as it refers to the perpetual march of time that follows them around, the volta signifying the jump that has been made from idealism to reality (See Gatsby).

  • Why a ‘charriot’? - this may be a reference to the Greek myth of Phaeton and the Sun God’s chariot. Phaeton begged Apollo to let him fly the chariot across the sky, and tricked him into swearing on the river Styx (an unbreakable vow for gods) to let him drive it. However, Phaeton was just a boy, and not even the other gods could control the sun horses, and Phaeton crashed the chariot, burning up in the process. He lived in joy for a brief moment, but this joy proved to be his destruction, and the very thing he wanted most in the world was what sent him into the ground. Marvell’s use of this metaphor in the poem may suggest that to be in love is to exist as Phaeton, consumed by joy but burning up like a star, an explosion of brilliance before the end. Love ensures our mortality, but it is also why life meant something and the loves we had are woven into the tapestry of legend and the world we leave behind us.

  • According to Ovid, Phaeton drove the chariot away from the Poles and crashed it by the equator, which is the Greek’s explanation as to why people from Africa have darker skin than the Germanic and Scandinavian tribes to the North. I can’t get any analysis out of this, but it is the purpose of the myth, so it’s probably worth saying in case anyone else can.

• ‘And yonder all before us lye/ Desarts of vast Eternity’ - a harsh glimpse of the barren permeance of death. There is a finality to us, and no question of escaping it. Though it is expressed in beautiful metaphor, it is a jarring, uncomfortable image that, like the sun ‘charriot’ we cannot bear to look at directly.

• ‘Beauty shall no more be found’ - beauty does not last forever. This isn’t even masked by metaphor, it is just brutal, and will get even more so.

• ‘Worms shall try/ That long preserv’d Virginity’ - This is horrible, blunt and almost comical in its absurd morbidity. It mocks the woman for wanting to preserve her ‘Virginity’ but capitalises it nonetheless, perhaps suggesting that it is important to him in that he never was able to take it, but trivial that a woman should keep hold of it. This is demonstrative of a gendered double standard.

• ‘And your quaint Honour turn to dust/And into ashes all my Lust’ - ashes to ashes, dust to dust is a biblical phrase that has been utilised throughout literature, notably as ‘dust’ being the physical manifestation of Original Sin in Phillip Pullman’s ‘His Dark Materials’ series and in T.S. Elliot’s post-war poem ‘The Waste Land’, which quotes ‘I will show you fear in a handful of dust’, suggesting that one can never understand fear until one is forced to look at death and its grey, pointless permanence. In ‘THCM’, it again references the inevitable death of both the characters and the supposed futility of holding back on account of societal pressures when one is confronted with the ineffable march of time.

  • However, this may also suggest that love becomes its own religion, a very typical conclusion of Renaissance and Metaphysical movements, as it has been seen in two of the three poems before this one in the anthology. Their ‘Honour’ and ‘Lust’ are singled out for their futility, yet what they are a part of is the ritual of love. Who cares if religion is there, because what matters is life, that bright burst of humanity before the inevitable end. In that sense, it is a valid philosophy.

  • There is also anaphora here and enjambment, accentuating the effect of time flashing more quickly and frantically than before. Does time even pass if you are unaware of it, or are you just alive, and death has no meaning? Is that the power of love?

• ‘The Grave’s a fine and private place,/ But none I think there do embrace.’ - this is DARK. It is a frightening ultimatum: the contrast with the formidable, capitalised ‘Grave’ with the gentler ‘embrace’ accentuates the stark contrast between life and death, and why they are important.

• ‘morning dew’ - rebirth from the ashes of realisation, as well as flattery of the woman’s (now acknowledged as ) finite beauty. This represents the beauty of a new day from the oblivion of night, but t does not last even until sunset. The window for ‘morning dew’ is so small, as is that of beauty. Just in case we had forgotten that this was a sex poem.

• ‘thy willing Soul transpires/ At every pore with instant Fires’ ‘sport us’ ‘amorous birds of prey’ ‘devour’ - intense sexual imagery beneath the philosophy of the last stanza. Sex as a form of liberation from the jaws of death, a release of happiness in a cruel and hopeless world? Or is he just framing it as such to get the woman to sleep with him?

  • ‘amorous birds of prey’ - hungry, violent, desperate attack at love. This is a survival mechanism, and they are latching onto this with all they can. Does this leave room, for emotion, or is love only sex?

• ‘Rather at once our Time devour/ Than languish in his slow-chapt pow’r’ - carpe diem really begins to shine through here: it is an acceptance of the power of time, but a rejection of the fact that it has power over people. What is death if joy existed? We only have the moment and are powerless in the face of everything else, so why should we not seize the day?

• Use of inclusive pronouns - ‘us’ ‘our’ ‘we’ in the last stanza, symbolising their unity.

• The ‘iron gates of life’ - the idea that death is but a movement from one space to the other, and we move from it of our own accord: in falling in love and recognising the power in time, we are able to reclaim autonomy over ourselves and leave with dignity. However, the ‘iron gates’ may b a reference to hell - Dante’s Inferno: ‘Abandon All Hope All Ye Who Enter Here!’.

• ‘Thus, though we cannot make our Sun/ Stand still, yet we will make him run’. - The most heavy hitting couplet of the poem. They cannot make time stop, but in accepting that, they can move on. They engage in a chase of life, daring it to catch up from it, and they can enjoy every second of it. Life is meant to be lived, not endured, and even though this is a poem about sex and a clumsy attempt at it, this is a beautiful everlasting image.

  • ‘will’ - the certainty and conviction of this: is he being arrogant in assuming that his argument has worked? Or is this made from desperation, defiance in the face of grim morality, that he must make something from life, or it would be futile. Or is it an embrace of the futility?

  • Personification of ‘time’ and the ‘Sun’ - makes this a battle between them. Diminishes its power?

Links to Gatsby

• The sense that time is sunning out and that they should seize the day - time is a common theme in Gatsby: according to the preface, ‘time’ is mentioned 87 times and there are 450 time-related words in the book:

  • the scene where Gatsby knocks the clock off the mantlepiece - represents

  • ‘And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past’ - this is a futile quest for what has been long gone. We can look back retrospectively, but eventually will be forced to march along with ‘times winged charriot’ that claims us all in the end. Yet, unlike Marvell’s resolution that he will ‘make it run’, Gatsby is arrogant enough to think he can ‘make [time] stand still’ through willpower. And in a way, he does become enveloped by the past, but it is a flawed, fragmented version of it, held aloft by hopes and dreams nd collapses under reality, when the current becomes too strong and the boat too flimsy.

• Yet while ‘THCM’ is deeply focused on the present, Gatsby is defined by his simultaneous desire to create an idealistic future and live in the past. (This could be a topic sentence in an essay comparing love and time, go on to talk about how Marvell discusses the significance of the future, but Gatsby remains rooted in the past: The novel itself is retrospective, as if even Nick has been affected by Gatsby’s fruitless hopes of manipulating time. In essence, Marvell’s persona accepts the fact that time will run out, an d turns that tragedy into something beautiful, but Gatsby lives in denial, ‘beating against the current’ and tragically suspended without catharsis.

• Gatsby’s eagerness to speak with Daisy and desire to make up for lost time mirror the persona’s desperation for advances on the women.

THE SCRUTINY

Context

• Written by the Cavalier poet Richard Lovelace. Cavalier poetry was written to celebrate joy and freedom from the Roundhead seriousness, and is often crude, poking fun at those it was written about in an affectionate way. Nowadays, we are disgusted by a lot of it.

• Lovelace spent a lot of time in prison, where he wrote much of his poetry.

• Most poems have classical or allegorical meanings

Content

A deeply condescending and arguably abhorrent poem about a man justifying to his lover why he keeps sleeping with other women. He mocks the woman for thinking they had any commitment, condescendingly explaining that he did not mean any of the promises he made to her while they were in bed, and that a lasting relationship is a ‘fond impossibility’. He says that he has loved her a full twelve hours, but now he must go and find ‘other beauties’ to love, because he feels it is his responsibility to grant them this ‘favour’. He then makes a comment about how he wants to have sex with virgins. And when he has finished having sex with all of these other women, then he will return to her, ‘laden with variety’.

Analysis - form and structure

• He does not linger on any particular metaphor, moving swiftly onwards: an urgency to love/have sex with as many people as possible.

• The stanzas reflect that in their structure: each is made from a quatrain which overlaps a rhyming couplet at the end. This may suggest that he treats love as a game, hence the childhood rhythm of the quatrain, hurriedly forming a semblance of a connection that is not powerful enough to become its own entity or to have any real importance. He does not appreciate the gravity of love, as poets before him did, but trivilalises it, making it an afterthought in his game.

• Rhythm alternates between iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, making it feel faintly irregular, but also leaving a space at the end of rhetorical questions. This creates a sense of argument and flawed confidence that appears almost comical.

• There are a couple of instances that contradict the iambs: ‘Lady, it is already morn’ connoting to impatience, and ‘Like skilful mineralists that sound…’ that slows the line, as if he is savouring it. This is repulsive to the modern reader, because it refers to his desire to take women’s virginity, but would have been read with much amusement by contemporary courtiers.

Analysis - language

• Rhetorical questions in the first couple of stanzas place him in a position of authority, and appear condescending: he is using flawed logic to make the woman feel small.

• ‘Lady, it is already morn’ ‘Have I not loved thee much and long,/ A tedious twelve hours’ space?’ - dark comedy in this. Twelve hours is not a long time, and one night does not equal commitment, and as modern readers, we empathise with the voiceless woman in the poem. Yet this would have been received as comedy by Lovelace’s contemporaries, as they would have laughed at this portrayal of their antics. They acknowledged the ridiculousness of the situation, but were selfish and did not consider the damage it did to women a problem. Thoughtless decadence (see Gatsby.

• ‘That fond impossibility’ - This is oxymoronic at first glance, but is actually one of the most insightful lines in the poem. This acknowledges that live cannot last forever, but rather than having it cut short by death or tragedy, it refers to the persona’s inability to keep it in his pants. This is so demonstrative of cavalier poetry, of how they took beautiful concepts and turned them to dust, taking nothing seriously but unable to escape this reality. They live in a dream world where they ignore the consequences, but are still permeated by the truths of humanity. This has vey obvious ties to Gatsby.

  • ‘fond’ - again, condescending. Though one could argue that this represents that the persona feels trapped by social obligations to sleep around, this feels more like a consolation to a sobbing child, an insincere apology formed of sympathy for those perceived as below him. This is an abhorrent way to treat women.

  • ‘impossibility’ - ironic. This is not an impossibility, he’s just a slut.

• ‘And rob thee of a new embrace’ - manipulation of the situation to make it look like it is the woman’s fault. Trivialises her feelings.

• References to ‘hair’ throughout the third stanza. Hair was a typically sexual image, and the poem turns almost pornographic. This is furthered by the sexual euphemisms in lines 13-5, which refer to the taking of women’s virginities: ‘But I must search the black and fair/ Like skilful mineralists that sound/ For treasure in un-plowed up ground’. The fact that he is presented as ‘skilful’ for this exemplifies the focus on male sexual gratification over love or female autonomy. Furthermore, the synonymy of female sexuality and ‘treasure’ presents women more than ever as a commodity, a prize of society without their own thoughts and feelings.

  • ‘my round’ is another innuendo. ‘Meaner beauties crowned’ again pedestalises sex as an achievement and currency. The effects of society on love?

• ‘I laden will return to thee/ Ev’n sated with variety’ - he will return to his lover with sexual accomplishments, and will be a better man for it, according to his own standards.

• There is no dialogue here, and the women is expected to agree. We see her protests, not unlike with the Flea, in the reactions of men that play it off. The difference between this and the flea however, is that Donne was clearly satirising these attitudes to sex and virginity in an intellectual conceit of seduction. Lovelace seems to be serious, the humour serving only as a good-natured mockery of himself and his contemporaries.

Links to Gatsby

• ‘That fond impossibility’ - this relates to Gatsby and Daisy. Gatsby wants to go back to the past, but that is but a dream, an impossibility.

• Decisions are made without consulting the women - both Tom and Daisy think they know exactly what Daisy wants, but we never know exactly what her opinion is. Is the woman in ‘The Scrutiny’ as much a victim of social pressure as the men? Does she think she should?

• ‘Treasure in un-plowed up ground’ - pedestalisation of virginity.

A SONG (ABSENT FROM THEE)

Context

• Written by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, another Cavalier poet. He wrote lewd, satirical poetry, some think even about the king.

• Known for his wit, drunkenness and promiscuity.

• Kidnapped his wife when comments were made suggesting he was too poor to marry her.

• His poetry was as radical as it was lewd, and much of it has queer undertones. He disappeared after saying things of the sort about the king, or risk arrest.

Content

The poem is a clear mockery of serious love poetry, and while it shares some common themes with ‘The Scrutiny’, I would argue that it is afar more intellectual. It speaks of a man separated from his lover (who we assume is a women because of the effeminate language, and the fact that it satirises tradition, though it is never explicitly said), explaining that he is on a crusade of sorts to sleep with other women, but she is the one he truly loves: ‘That my Fantastick mind may prove/The torments it deserves to try’. He says that when he is finished, he will return to her and have sex (?), and then he will be in heaven. It is ambiguous as to whether he is mocking those like Lovelace, who promote promiscuity as a pinnacle of male virtue, or those like Shakespeare, who pedestalise love’s eternal beauty. Perhaps it is both, and perhaps he is just trying to piss people off.

Analysis - form and structure

• Regular ABAB stanzas with iambic tetrameter, very standard, a mimic of love poetry before his time

• Note the lack of rhyming couplets, perhaps connoting to his idea that love is a construct that is represented as an ideal rather than a reality.

• Transition throughout the poem from far apart from his lover to with her, from the present to the conditional, is not mirrored in the structure or language. This apathy may again tie in with the sense of parody.

Analysis - language

• ‘Absent from thee I languish still’ - this is immediately very dramatic, but very satirical: the persona is being melodramatic - at the expense of himself? Of serious lovers? Of love itself?

• ‘straying fool’ - explicit reference to adultery. Does he seem ashamed?

• No female voice throughout, almost mansplaining: ‘my fantastick mind’. She is an object to him, and he is presenting himself as a saviour.

• ‘the Torments it deserves to try’ - justification of his adultery, and making it seem as a trial. The persona presents himself as suffering, and placing himself as this christ-like figure who is having to sacrifice his mind for his body, when in reality, he is just a whore. Would contemporaries have been made uncomfortable with this? No, because this bigotry was intrinsic to society.

• ‘When wearied with a world of woe’ - alliterative, long, mournful. See above.

• ‘To thy safe bosom I retire… May I contented there expire’ - what could be romantic is tainted with sexual imagery (‘expire’ relating to orhgasm, perhaps?). A complete inability to take himself seriously.

  • Perhaps living seriously would kill him, because he has built the foundations of his morality in quicksand, the figments of his life a half-imagined fantasia of dreams.

• ‘Heav’n’ ‘unbles’d’ - religious imagery, satirical considering the adultery and promiscuity throughout the poem. Pedestalisation of sex as a sacred act? Is this ironic? After all, there is always a grain of sincerity in satire, or it wouldn’t be worth writing about.

• ‘Faithless to thee, false, unforgiv’n’ - regrets his immorality, but feels he can’t help it. Yet, he is helpless in the face of his own morality - refusing to take responsibility, or unable to?

  • Homosexuality? This would explain the self-hatred and the satire, the careful double entendres? But perhaps not.

• ‘And lose my Everlasting rest’ - denial that he will get into heaven? Acceptance (see above). Is this what he wants? Does the regularity and ridiculousness of his false sincerities mask an underlying desire for something steady and continuous? Does he wish he could love like he is supposed to, but is fringed on the outside, attending life in a mask of decadence and immorality, because to be honest would kill him?

Links to Gatsby

• Lack of female voice

• Male fantasies that mask a deeper hurt: Gatsby says he wants a life with Daisy, but what he really wants is a life where he could love her in the way he’s supposed to, and there would be nothing illicit in her decision to love him. He wants so badly to be born into a life, to not have to ‘beat’, constantly, ‘against the current’ and still be thrown backwards. There is a futility here, masked by a facade of nonsensical beauty and immorality, and it is oddly tragic.

• Lack of religion - TJ Eckleburg has usurped God for the lower classes, but Gatsby and the others have risen above him, fir what do men need of Gods when they have it all? However, the persona here has abandoned God because he feels God has abandoned him.

• Adultery has clear links to Tom Buchanan, but I think this poem is more complex. Or is Tom too yearning?

• Homeoerotic subtext could be applied to Nick and his feelings for Tom/Jordan/Gatsby? He gets engaged but breaks it off, says he loves Jordan, but praises her boyishness, and the way she seems almost untouchable to him, a concept to pedestalise, rather than a soul to love. And Tom, his strange erotic fantasy of whom he is outwardly repulsed by and inwardly yearns for. He is jealous of Daisy because she gets Gatsby, but also because she can love Tom, and he is allowed neither. So he tries (and fails) to present himself as a mystery man, when in reality he is a withering closet case whose boat is drifting further and further from the shore because the lighthouse has been bolted off to him by society.

THE GARDEN OF LOVE