Emotional and Rational.doc

1、Emotinal and RationalBoth Shakespeare and Marvell enjoy high reputations in writing love poems which is never outdated in poetry. That time of year thou mayst in me behold and To His Coy Mistress are the typical ones in each poets masterworks about love. When poerty meets love, sensitive emotion bec

2、omes natural and essential. The two poets share the same theme that people should fall in love when they are still young because flying time waits for nobody. To make their points stand, Shakespeare and Marvell give very classic metaphors with rich emotion in the two poems. For example, Shakespeare

3、compares himself to “that time of year”, “the twilight of such day, the glowing of such fire” to illustrate that life is short and it will pass away very soon in That time of year thou mayst in me behold. While in Marvells To His Coy Mistress we can catch it in the famous lines of the first stanza.

4、The writer employs a lot of exaggerations to praise the mistress. From “Indian Ganges” to the “Humber” river, the writer presents the image of wide space to the reader; from “the Flood” to “the Jews conversion”, the great extent of time is developed. Marvells emotion gets even extreme and wild in th

5、e last 8 lines of the first stanza and in the last stanza. the poet is willing to spend hundreds of years to adore the mistress eyes and breast, ages to every part and the last age to show her heart. “Let us roll all our strength and all our sweetness up into one ball and tear our pleasure with roug

6、h strife thorough the iron gates of life” of the last stanza, especially the last two lines of the whole poem “Thus though we cannot make our sun stand still, yet we will make him run” achieve his strong emotion to its summit. Somehow it gets too strong and gives me a kind of wild feeling by the mea

7、ning that even the time can be overcomed by their love. But lets turn back to the content of That time of year thou mayst in me behold and To His Coy Mistress, we can easily feel that Shakespeare and Marvell differ greatly in expressing emotions. Shakespeare described three scenes by quatrains. He i

8、s a master in diction. Through his fine words we can even feel how the “yellow leaves” “shake against the the cold” in the late autumn; how the “black night” gradually takes the sun away in the twilight; how “the glowing of such fire” fades into “ashes”. Each of the scene develops a sad and desolate

9、 picture of the ending of a period of time. He did not exaggerate. He did not go wild on emotion. He just provide his true heart and real feeling to the reader.Shakespeares emotion in this poem is like a mountain stream winding through the green. It attracks and appeals to you comfortably. On the co

10、ntrary, Marvells emotion is a flame burning intensely. It is intoxicated and addicted.When it comes to the second stanza of Marvells To His Coy Mistress, the poet suddenly changed his style and pictured some unpleasent scenes. This is where Marvells rational expresstion starts. Compared by the emoti

11、onal elements, it stands out even more ourstandingly. Everyone ages and will eventually face the death. The mistresss beauty shall gone and in her “marble vault” the poets song shall never be heard. “The worm shall try that long preservd virginity, and your quaint honour to dust and into ashes all m

12、y lust”. Marvell lost all his romantic tones and started to give a picture of reality after the mistress death. It is hard to associate the above words to a love poem however, but that is the ingeniousness of it. When people is dead, everything is meanless, therefore we should take a good advantage

13、of the moment - to taste the happiness of love when the face is goodlooking and the body in fine shape. With all the logical steps, the poet came up with his opinion gradually. All the pleasant and unpleasant description was to serve one purpose to persuade the mistress to accept his love. In this s

14、tanza, Marvell became rational and even a little cold hearted here.Then take a look at That time of year thou mayst in me behold, Shakespeare gives the same conclusion in the last two lines that life is short, we should make a good use of the remaining moments of life to “love more strong”. Apparent

15、ly he is more focused on the first three quatrains of metaphor than being logical.That time of year thou mayst in me behold is a typical Shakespeares love poem. It is full of metaphors and extremely magnificent words and expressions, through that Shakespeares personality of being sentimental was kno

16、wn to the world. In most of his sonnets, he employed abundant figures of speech to achieve the effect of passionate and romantic emotions, which is also the main feature of his works.To His Coy Mistress, on the other hand, is an excellent paradox of Marvells emotional but rational thoughts, amasingl

17、y wild but logical imaginations. He could praise woman with the strongest emotion and also reason them with the coldest heart. His exquisite technique totally impressed and refreshed the reader.It does not really matter whether the poet is focused on emotion or rationality. To my understanding, good poems appeal to peoples feelings and make people reflect. They both did it.