Poem SUMMARIES – Flashcards

From the title, we can tell that the speaker is addressing this poem to a group of virgins. He's telling them that they should gather their "rosebuds" while they can, because time is quickly passing. He drives home this point with some images from nature, including flowers dying and the sun setting. He thinks that one's youth is the best time in life, and the years after that aren't so great. The speaker finishes off the poem by encouraging these young virgins to make good use of their time by getting married, before they're past their prime and lose the chance -http://www.shmoop.com/gather-ye-rosebuds/summary.html

During the first stanza, the speaker tells the mistress that if they had more time and space, her "coyness" (see our discussion on the word "coy" in "What's Up With the Title?") wouldn't be a "crime." He extends this discussion by describing how much he would compliment her and admire her, if only there was time.In the second stanza he says, "BUT," we don't have the time, we are about to die! He tells her that life is short, but death is forever. - http://www.shmoop.com/to-his-coy-mistress/summary.html

The speaker explains that he is forced to spend time apart from his lover, but before he leaves, he tells her that their farewell should not be the occasion for mourning and sorrow. In the same way that virtuous men die mildly and without complaint, he says, so they should leave without "tear-floods" and "sigh-tempests," for to publicly announce their feelings in such a way would profane their love. The speaker says that when the earth moves, it brings "harms and fears," but when the spheres experience "trepidation," though the impact is greater, it is also innocent. The love of "dull sublunary lovers" cannot survive separation, but it removes that which constitutes the love itself; but the love he shares with his beloved is so refined and "Inter-assured of the mind" that they need not worry about missing "eyes, lips, and hands." Though he must go, their souls are still one, and, therefore, they are not enduring a breach, they are experiencing an "expansion"; in the same way that gold can be stretched by beating it "to aery thinness," the soul they share will simply stretch to take in all the space between them. If their souls are separate, he says, they are like the feet of a compass: His lover's soul is the fixed foot in the center, and his is the foot that moves around it. The firmness of the center foot makes the circle that the outer foot draws perfect: "Thy firmness makes my circle just, / And makes me end, where I begun." - http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/donne/section5.rhtml

n this poem, the shepherd persona speaks to his beloved, evoking "all the pleasures" of a peaceful springtime nature. He promises her the delights of nature and his courtly attention. The first quatrain is the invitation to "Come live with me and be my love." Next, the speaker describes the pleasant natural setting in which he plans that they will live. Their life will be one of leisure; they will "sit upon the rocks," watch the shepherds, and listen to the birds. The shepherd does not refer to the cold winter, when herding sheep becomes difficult. He does not suggest that his work requires effort or that he may need to go off into the hills away from his beloved to herd his flock. Instead, he imagines their life together as a game enjoyed in an eternal spring. He promises to make clothes and furnishings for his beloved from nature's abundant harvest: wool gowns from the sheep, beds and caps of flowers, dresses embroidered with leaves. Even the other shepherds seem to be there only to entertain the beloved, to "dance and sing/ for thy delight." The poem ends by summing up the "delights" of the pastoral idyll and repeating the opening invitation. - http://www.enotes.com/topics/passionate-shepherd/in-depth

The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" is Sir Walter Raleigh's response to a poem written by Christopher Marlowe, "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love." In the Marlowe poem, the shepherd proposes to his beloved by portraying their ideal future together: a life filled with earthly pleasures in a world of eternal spring. Raleigh's reply, however, debunks the shepherd's fanciful vision. While Marlowe's speaker promises nature's beauty and a litany of gifts, Raleigh's nymph responds that such promises could only remain valid "if all the world and love were young." Thus, she introduces the concepts of time and change. In her world, the seasons cause the shepherd's "shallow rivers" to "rage," rocks to "grow cold" and roses to "fade." The shepherd's gifts might be desirable, but they too are transient: they "soon break, soon wither" and are "soon forgotten." In the end, the nymph acknowledges that she would accept the shepherd's offer "could youth last" and "had joys no date." Like the shepherd, she longs for such things to be true, but like Raleigh, she is a skeptic, retaining faith only in reason's power to discount the "folly" of "fancy's spring." - http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-nymphsreplyshepherd/#gsc.tab=0

The speaker asks the object of his affection to come live with him—presumably to marry him and be his wife. He then discusses fish in pools and brooks as an indirect way of describing the allure of his beloved. The river will be warmed by her eyes, and the passing fish will be drawn to her, easily caught. If she enters the water, the fish will follow her. While others may catch fish in slimy and hurtful ways, deceiving the fish, the beloved is her "own bait," honestly attracting others to her. The poet concludes that any fish that can resist her charms is wiser than himself. - http://www.gradesaver.com/donne-poems/study-guide/summary-the-bait

Sonnet 138 presents a candid psychological study of the mistress that reveals many of her hypocrisies. Certainly she is still very much the poet's mistress, but the poet is under no illusions about her character. - http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/shakespeares-sonnets/summary-and-analysis/sonnet-138 Basically, she cheats on him and she pretends that he is younger than he actually is and in their lying they're both happy and they don't want to mess with any of that because they think it all works out better for them if they don't bring up the truth

onnet 130 is a parody of the Dark Lady, who falls too obviously short of fashionable beauty to be extolled in print. The poet, openly contemptuous of his weakness for the woman, expresses his infatuation for her in negative comparisons. - http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/shakespeares-sonnets/summary-and-analysis/sonnet-130 So, she is basically a real woman, and even though she isn't perfect like most love poems make women, he loves her anyways

Basically, the speaker is saying that if his "master-mistress" (man) was a woman, he would be in love with him but he can't have feelings for him because that's not right and because he is also a man

Talks about the immense beauty of the woman he is in love with, and how she is so pretty that summer can't do her beauty justice because there is so much wrong with summer. Also, the poem gives their love eternity because he says that as long as the poem is around, her beauty is still there and so is their love