The poems of the renaissance are all timeless works of art. Two authors, Robert Herrick and John Donne, have many similarities and differences within their work. Many comparisons and contrasts can be made between Herrick's "To The Virgins, To Make Much Of Time" and Donne's "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.".
Each work concerns time. Robert Herrick believed that when you get older, you may regret not experiencing certain things earlier. He encouraged virgins to go out and live life to the fullest, because your only young once. If that means enjoying the beauty of the opposite sex, "Then be not coy, but use your time." Why waste the best period of your life, when you look better than your ever going to look again? Herrick also points out that when youth is gone, it's gone forever, and you have the rest of your life to look back on the things that you have done and smile, or look back on the things that you skipped out on and regret. .
Time has a completely different meaning when it comes to John Donne. In his poem, he is not necessarily concerned with his time left on earth; it is the time that he is forced to be away from his lover that hurts. The subject of time seems insignificant until the two lovers separate, then, the only thing that seems important is how long they will be separated. Each poem is similar in such that time is working against their wishes. Time is inexistent as long as the lovers are together.
"To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time" expresses much love. Not only does it follow the message of "carpe diem," but it goes further to suggest young girls get married right away, while they still can. Herrick creates a sort of urgency in the poem, making it seem that if a girl reading the poem is uncertain about love, not to think about it and to just go out and get married. If she doesn't, Herrick states the consequence- "For having lost but once your prime, you may forever tarry.
