Krantz

Poetry Questions
Jonson, Herrick, Waller, Phillips, Marvell

Jonson

Compare the tone and images from "On My First Daughter" to those of "On My First Son." What are the similarities? What are the differences? What does this tell you about seventeenth-century attitudes toward children? towards male and female children?

Consider Jonson's poem to John Donne. What is its meaning? Compare the tone with that of the poem "On Something that Walks Somewhere." What words suggest the very different feelings of the two poems? What images?

SONG: TO CELIA

  1. What are the dominant images?
  2. What does the poem imply about the sending of the wreath of roses?

TO HEAVEN

Compare Jonson's poem with one of Donne's Holy Sonnets. What themes and images are the same? How does the resolution work? Are the poems more similar or different and why?

Herrick

UPON THE LOSS OF HIS MISTRESS

  1. How does this love poem differ from those of Donne?
  2. What is the effect of the long list of names?

THE VINE

  1. What is the central image?
  2. For what is the image a metaphor?
  3. How is gender used in the poem and what might that suggest about 17th century beliefs about gender?
  4. We have ideas that earlier ages were less sexually explicit than our own. How explicit is Herrick's work compared to, say, modern song lyrics? Which is more effective in its eroticism?

CORINNA'S GOING A-MAYING

  1. How is the poem reminiscent of Spenser's Epithalamion?
  2. Where does it use the Carpe Diem (sieze the day) theme?
  3. What is the image of the birds saying matins?
  4. What do the words "budding boy or girl" mean?

TO THE VIRGINS TO MAKE MUCH OF TIME

This is another famous poem. It also uses the idea of let's get on with love-making because time is running out. Compare it to Marvell's "To his Coy Mistress." (1691-2). Which is more effective in its use of images? In its argument?

  1. Carpe diem means Òseize the day.Ó What themes in HerrickÕs poem make it a carpe diem poem?
  2. What kinds of persuasion are being used here?
  3. What allusions occur and why are they appropriate?
  4. Roses would have suited HerrickÕs meter. Why is the word rose-buds richer?
  5. What do you think of HerrickÕs advice? Is there any peril in it?

HIS PRAYER TO BEN JONSON

What is the tone of this poem? How does it compare to Jonson's praise of Donne and Donne's of Jonson?

Marvell

Besides having considered the "Carpe Diem" theme of the poem, consider its overall uses of space and time. How do these work?

Waller

What is the argument of this poem? How does it compare with other poems we've considered so far?

Phillips

  1. How long did the child live?
  2. What makes its death especially poignant?
  3. Compare to Jonson's poems on the death of his children.
  4. Do any differences in the poems seem to be a result of the different sexes of the poets?