Todays Poem: To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
How funny: I was literally in the middle of comparing Herrick’s poem to Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” when I saw someone’s tweet linking this post! (Talking of comparison, Herrick’s reference to coyness occurs only in the last stanza; Marvell’s in the second line!).
It’s one of those poems where its lightness, and seeming effortlessness, belies its artistry. It was only after a few readings, for instance, I noticed how perfectly the spondaic “Old time” & “go marry” - at the beginning & at the end of line 2 of the first & last stanzas - complement each other.
And the 3rd stanza, with its chiasmus of superlatives and comparatives, until we fall over the edge of the sole enjambment in the poem, where the final line “succeed[s] the former” - it’s a perfectly placed flourish!
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