George Herbert

THE COLLAR.    I STRUCK the board, and cry�d, No more ;                                 I will abroad.     What ?  shall I ever sigh and pine ? My lines and life are free ; free as the rode,     Loose as the winde, as large as store.                                 Shall I be still in suit ?     Have I no harvest but a thorn     To let me bloud, and not restore What I have lost with cordiall fruit ?                                 Sure there was wine,     Before my sighs did drie it : there was corn               Before my tears did drown it.     Is the yeare onely lost to me ?               Have I no bayes to crown it ? No flowers, no garlands gay ?  all blasted ?                                 All wasted ?     Not so, my heart : but there is fruit,                                 And thou hast hands.               Recover all thy sigh-blown age On double pleasures :  leave thy cold dispute Of what is fit, and not forsake thy cage,                                 Thy rope of sands, Which pettie thoughts have made, and made to thee     Good cable, to enforce and draw,                                 And be thy law,     While thou didst wink and wouldst not see.                                 Away ;  take heed :                                 I will abroad. Call in thy deaths head there : tie up thy fears.                                 He that forbears               To suit and serve his need,                                 Deserves his load. But as I rav�d and grew more fierce and wilde,                                 At every word,     Methought I heard one calling, Childe :                                 And I reply�d, My Lord.

THE DEFINITION OF LOVE.
by Andrew Marvell

I.

MY Love is of a birth as rare
    As 'tis, for object, strange and high ;
It was begotten by Despair,
    Upon Impossibility.

II.

Magnanimous Despair alone
    Could show me so divine a thing,
Where feeble hope could ne'er have flown,
    But vainly flapped its tinsel wing.

III.

And yet I quickly might arrive
    Where my extended soul is fixed ;
But Fate does iron wedges drive,
    And always crowds itself betwixt.

IV.

For Fate with jealous eye does see
    Two perfect loves, nor lets them close ;
Their union would her ruin be,
    And her tyrannic power depose.

V.

And therefore her decrees of steel
    Us as the distant poles have placed,
(Though Love's whole world on us doth wheel),
    Not by themselves to be embraced,

VI.

Unless the giddy heaven fall,
    And earth some new convulsion tear.
And, us to join, the world should all
    Be cramp'd into a planisphere.

VII.

As lines, so love's oblique, may well
    Themselves in every angle greet :
But ours, so truly parallel,
    Though infinite, can never meet.

VIII.

Therefore the love which us doth bind,
    But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the mind,
    And opposition of the stars.

To his Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day;
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

        But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv'd virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.

        Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

 "To His Coy Mistress" is (with Herrick's "To Maidens to Make Much of Time") one of the era's most famous expressions of the carpe diem motif.  Note the comparisons one might make with Donne's and Jonson's poetic flights of fancy regarding the lover's claims about the vast world's riches, and the cosmic scale of time.  The phrase "But at my back I always here" shows up in Eliot's "The Wasteland," with a slightly different sound accompanying the persona's observation.  Note that, like many Marvell poems, this one unfolds in stanzas that work like verse paragraphs, opening with a hypothetical exposition of timeless love, changing to the dreadful effects of time (see Spenser and Shakespeare), and turning the threat into the motive for reversing the effect of "devouring time" ("Now let us sport us while we may, / And now, like amorous birds of prey, / Rather at once our time devour / Than languish in his slow-chapped power.").  His closing three couplets are a triumph of the metaphysical conceit's power to represent the human condition in violent, memorable, and witty metaphor.   Wylie Sypher often uses this poem as an example of the peculiar restlessness and disturbed proportions by which he defines "Mannerist" style in English literature (e.g., Four Stages of Renaissance Style 118-9).  There he says "Marvell's sharp but sustained attack [upon conventional Renaissance poetic formulas] . . . is like the loose and surprising adjustment and counter-adjustment of figure to figure in Parmigianino's paintings, with their evidence of subjective stress . . . [which] relies upon an involved energy, not a closed design [which produces] equilibriums [which] are always momentary and undependable" (119).  To test Sypher's visual metaphor, compare the poem's stretching of perspective and explosive shifts of point of view to the structure of Parmigianino's "Madonna dal Collo Lungo" (1534-40).

"The Definition of Love" attaches Donne's navigation motifs to an allegory about the birth of Love out of Despair.  The poem addresses love forbidden by social inequality.  Might there be a pattern here?

 "The Collar" resembles Donne's Holy Sonnets in its use of violent verse to depict violent spiritual crises.  Its rhyme (see "Denial") is slightly off, a kind of mockery of rhyme that challenges the "free" poet's rebellion while he rants about what he's going to accomplish when he abandons religious verse.  This stumbling meter drops irregularly into dimeters until the final four lines bring true rhyme in the sudden dialogue between a hithertofor ignored persona (i.e., "My Lord") who has been overhearing the poem we've been considering ourselves the sole audience for.

• What does this do to us, as well as to the speaker?

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