Poetry Blog #2

Going into this assignment, I actually did not expect to find similarities between "To His Coy Mistress" and "You, Andrew Marvell."  However, both poems left me with the exact same thought, the thought that time is fleeting and life is short (yes, both are super cliche, I know).  The first poem, though written centuries before the second, emphasizes more about how time and love are both intertwined, racing towards their ends.  This becomes familiar at a shift in the poem, at the second stanza, "But at my back I always hear Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near."  "You, Andrew Marvell" discusses the pace of time, but on a more global scale.  While Marvell's poem focused on how time related to one person or pair of people, MacLeish's poem shows how time affects each place around the world, places like Baghdad, Sicily, and Spain.  The last line in this poem especially displays time's tendency to darken subtly the lives of people:  "The shadow of the night comes on..."

Reading Strand's essay only confirmed my thoughts on the two poems, especially "You, Andrew Marvell."  In the third paragraph he states plainly, "'You, Andrew Marvell'... suggests is not just the simple diurnal round of night and day, but the more tragic rise and fall of civilizations."  He also helped me understand the poem further by pointing out punctuation and syntax that I hadn't noticed before.  For example, the ellipsis is used to restore the cities and civilizations that will eventually fall to the dark, to time.  It "seems to imply that another cycle of replenishment is on its way."  Overall, I think that Strand points out the cyclical pattern of life and time.  He highlights the parts of MacLeish's poem that emphasis this ever-changing force that is time.  I'm not sure how well I can relate to the poems and the essay; I can't say I understand all of their parts.  Perhaps one day once I've been through time and have experienced its nature as described in these passages, I'll be able to comprehend it better.