Compare and contrast the treatment of time and mutability by any 2 writers in the period.

Qn for ms lye: do the two have to consistently interact in the same point? Eg. can there be a
point solely on mutability without reference to time?
Answer: No.

Notes

Mutability (not a neutral concept): as opposed to constancy and corruption/decay

(particularly with negative connotations)

- Reminder for the fools: Cannot only have a point that has marvell/sidney without the
other
- Instead of analysing the entire poem and stating what the poem argues, use it to
push forth the essay’s comparison

THE ACTUAL POINTS

Point 1: While Marvell acknowledges the reality of the mistress’ mortality and inevitable
death and decay of her physical beauty with the passage of time, Sidney denies the
mistress’ mortality, elevating her beyond the reach of mortal vulnerability through petrarchan
conceits
● Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress:”
○ Satirises Petrarchan assumptions about the eternal courtship of the lovers by
making the breadth of time seem ridiculous, citing the two bookends of
Biblical time from ‘ten years before the Flood’ to ‘conversion of the Jews’
○ turns his love into a stiff, unfeeling, even grotesque ‘vegetable’, and paints a
torturously slow blazon in ‘An age at least to every part’, to present the overblown
excesses of this length of time → satirising those lovers who take their own sweet
time to get action on → exaggerated, hyperbolic
○ In reality, he depicts Time as a ‘winged chariot hurrying near’: warning of us
how quickly Time pursues and will overcome us
○ Despite acknowledging that his “Lady… deserve[s]” this long courtship, he
contends that time and mutability do not permit it as at his. The contrast of
languorous long vowel sounds in “had we but world enough in time” to the
quick, short vowel sounds of “but at my back I always hear” signals an abrupt
transition from the idealised world of petrarchan love to the realities of human
mortality, where the speed and urgency of “Time’s winged chariot hurrying
near” and time itself is embodied in the quick, short vowel sounds that sound
like they are chasing after the poet.
○ Eternity is instead revealed to be a ‘desert’ of death and desolation, where will
we be found in a ‘marble vault’: representing the imminence of mortality
○ In the context of mortality, we see how the superficially glamorous and
incorrupt body of the beloved is subject to decay: ‘the worm shall try / that
long-preserved virginity’: the eventual decomposition of the tomb means that
the beloved’s closely-maintained chastity throughout life (though it seems
long-preserved) will still be taken away
○ Parallel construction of ‘honour turn to dust / And into ashes all my lust’
shows how all our human attributes shall fall away into nothingness
 ○ Therefore, Marvell shows us how time’s swift progress cannot be outrun and
will result in death and the decay of our mutable bodies
○ His response is that we should seize the day and take charge of our limited
time:
○ Rather at once our time devour; than languish in his slow chapped (slowly consuming
power) → reversal of our typical relationship to time where we make use of it and
devour it instead of let it consume us → devour represents a ravenous and unsparing
use of all the time we have to spend in romantic pursuits
○ The same idea in ‘making [our sun] run’: that we should make quick use of
our time and thus direct its progress:
○ Thus Marvell uses the premise of humanity’s fundamental mutability to argue
towards the conclusion that even though our time is inevitably limited, we
have the agency of marshalling and taking action within this context.
● Sidney’s perfectly immutable beloved
By elevating Stella to a divine sphere, Sidney suggests that her beauty is the
paragon of Nature’s perfection, and rivals even the beauties in classical traditions -
hence her beauty is exalted beyond the material, physical realm, and attains a godly
status that is not subject to the destruction of time and decay.
○ Sonnet 9
■ Stella’s face is described as “Queen Virtue’s court”, an immortal
palace of flawless beauty, far removed from the constraints of time
and decay.
■ Her facial features are all transmuted from their fleshly quality to the more
enduring quality of minerals → not organic, entirely incorruptible,
precious and eternal, dazzling in their beauty but suggest her beauty
is eternal, like the enduring materials themselves
● her “front” is “alabaster pure”,
● her hair “gold”,
● her mouth “red porphyr”,
● her teeth “pearl[s]”,
● her cheeks “marble”
■ using the images of precious crystals which are able to stand the test
of time with little change in their lustre and value, Sidney highlights the
unparalleled beauty of Stella, and the immutability of her beauty
○ Sonnet 25
■ Virtue herself “took Stella’s shape” and dwells in Stella’s beauteous
form
■ Stella is a divine incarnate - her beauty is unrestricted by temporality,
and indestructible by time, given the everlasting nature of the goddess
she hosts

Nice segue: It is precisely because of a constantly beautiful beloved that the lover can be
constant in his affection

Point 2: Constancy of lover

Both Sidney and Marvell highlight the immutability and constancy of one’s love for his
mistress. However, while Sidney utilises the concept of immutability to express the whole-
hearted devotion of the lover for the mistress, Marvell instead uses it to reflect upon the
perfection of this love.
- Sonnet 18
- ASTROPHIL’S Sidney’s whole-hearted disregard for self in his pursuit of
love emphasises the immutability of his affections for Stella
- Sidney starts by portraying the ruthless treatment he has to suffer under
Reason, as it chides him with “sharp checks” and flat out shames him for
devoting his talents into the pursuit of love
- In fact, Sidney acknowledges the objective truth of Reason’s
criticisms, as the word “audit” conjures an image of a strict account,
emphasising the impartial, systematic nature of the evaluation that
reason has conducted to reach the unbiased conclusion that Sidney
has squandered his talents
- This highlights how Sidney logical side does admit to personal
mismanagement in his decision to devote his life to exalting Stella
- In fact, when he uses his “wit” to “defend” “those passions”, it only gives him
“vain annoys” as a “reward”
- This highlights how his devotion to Stella is a fruitless venture and
usage of his wits, as he receives nothing but more worries and
anxieties
- But when Sidney states that he is about to “lose [himself]” in this pursuit,
suggesting a very bleak state where his very existence is lost in limbo, the
primary concern that dominates his mind is that he “lose[s] no more for
Stella’s sake”, clearly demonstrating how his overriding, constant and
immutable priority is still his retention of his continued capacity to exalt Stella
through his writings
- His “greater sorrow” is the possible incapacitation that debilitates his
ability to devote to Stella, and the loss of himself does not give him the
greatest regret on its own, thus emphasising a single-minded,
immutable pursuit of his love for Stella

- Sonnet 21
- Sidney disregards the pain and supposed wastage of his talents as
insignificant when compared to the object of his pursuit in love - Stella’s
unmatched beauty - to highlight his immutable devotion to her
- Sidney starts by highlighting that his mind is “marred” and “windlass[ed]” by
love
- The image of love wielding an ancient torture device emphasises the
extent to which love torments him, such that his mind is in a complete
state of disarray, confusion and pain
- Beyond pain, love also detracts Sidney from the greatness he was supposed
to set out to achieve when “mad March great promise made of [him]”, with the
image of spring suggesting a blossoming of his potential in his early years
- However, because of his devotion to Stella, “the May of [his] years
much decline”, suggesting that he is not fulling the trajectory of
success set out from young, which plants the seed of doubt - “What
can be hoped my harvest time will be?”
- This highlights the bleak outlook of his future potential, and the
lack of hope for fruitfulness in his achievements in life moving
 forward
- Despite the description of pain and the depiction of him squandering his
talents, Sidney concludes the poem by asking his friend “Hath this world
aught so fair as Stella is”, with the simplicity of the rhetorical statement
emphasising the sheer “truth” of his proposal that Stella is greater than all
other achievements he can possibly attain with his talents
- This emphasises how his devotion to Stella remains constant and
immutable despite all of these obstacles and self-doubt.
- The definition of love
- The love between the lover and the beloved is destined to be devoid of
physical consummation and intimacy - they will “never meet”.
- The finality of the separation is of a cosmic, superhuman scale: “Unless the
giddy heaven fall, /And earth some new convulsion tear; /And, us to join, the
world should all /Be cramp’d into a planisphere.” The impossibility of the
conditions under which the lovers could meet physically (i.e. the complete,
irreversible destruction/alteration of the entire material world) highlights the
hopelessness of their situation - their separation is inevitable and eternal.
- Despite the physical, “impossible” distance between the lovers, their love
does not suffer a reduction in emotional intensity; in fact, their love is made all
the more precious, rarefied and perfect by their physical separation. Their
relationship is maintained solely through “the conjunction of the mind” - which
makes their love nobler, as it is purely spiritual and rational, devoid of baser,
carnal motives.Their love is also indestructible by Fate - it continues to exist
and flourish against Fate’s malicious intervention.
- The constancy and immutability of their love is again highlighted in the
comparison of their love to parallel lines - which are “infinite” - the perfection
and strength of their love is eternal and endless/boundless, just as “[true]”
parallel lines extend on and on, all the while maintaining their perfectly
straight quality. The perfection of their love is set against the “oblique” love
/lines of less noble lovers whose love is tainted by physical desires and baser
instincts, hence less admirable and desirable. Parallel lines are “true” - the
apex of pure, noble love, and a model to be emulated. (“True” also refers
more commonly to the faithfulness and devotion of lovers)

- :( Sonnet 14
- Sidney describes how his love for Stella endures despite how painful
and sinful he acknowledges this desire and affection to be.
- Sidney starts by pointing out that his emotional torment trumps that of what
even the gods like Prometheus, or he “who first stale down the fire”, had
experienced, as a “fiercer gripe doth tire” his “breast”
- The visceral image of a claw ripping apart his heart mercilessly
reinforces the intensity of the inhuman nature of pain that Sidney has
to endure in his love for Stella
- In fact, Sidney is also described to be the explicit target for Cupid’s infliction of
pain, as the latter on Sidney “all his quiver spend”, with the sentence structure
and denotation of “all” emphasising the absolute, complete exhaustion of his
arsenal in his efforts to torment the love-sick Sidney, thus highlighting the
intensity of pain Sidney has to suffer.
 - Beyond pain, Sidney also suggests that his affection for Stella is also one that
sins him, as his “well-formed soul” “plunge[s]” in the “mire”
- The evocative image of a picturesque soul, which is commonly
associated as the sanctuary of virtue, being weighed and dragged
down into an inescapable, quick-sand that symbolises its corruption by
sins, highlights how his love for Stella is corrupting of his previously
virtuous self
- The rhyme at the end of line 6 and 7, linking the words “desire” and
“mire”, also directly links the notion of Sidney’s love with its sinful, dirty
quality together, further emphasising how his love for Stella is
characterised by sin
- However, although Sidney acknowledges this love of his to be deeply painful
and sinful, he declares in the conclusion that despite the fact that “love is sin”,
“let [him] sinful be”.
- The matter-of-fact tone of his admission stands in stark contrast with
the abhorrent depiction of the corruption of the soul as described
before, which seems to suggest that his love for Stella is immutable no
matter how grave the ill consequences are
- The unornamented nature of his final declaration also emphasises

Point 2.5 (very speculative sorry)

● Maybe we could discuss Sidney’s rather questionable discussion of time when it
comes to falling in love?
○ At first he depicts the slow-moving power of Time in developing his love for
Stella:
○ Not at first shot, but ‘known worth did in length of time proceed’:
○ ‘Till by degrees he had full conquest got’: again emphasising the gradual
nature of the process
○ Includes one of his typical verb chains to demonstrate the process from loving
to liking, etc
○ The comparison of how he used to be to ‘now even that last foostep of lost
liberty / is gone’: the idea of last footstep shows how it was a slowly painfully
lost battle for Astrophil
○ But in other sonnets like 20, his fall is depicted as immediate and sudden: ‘ere
I could fly thence it pierced my heart’: ok this is weird sorry
○ I suppose there are some parallels in Marvell? Like how the unfortunate lover
is made to be continuously and endlessly tortured by the gods for the entirety
of his life, fighting a long drawn-out battle with Love
○ And how Damon the mower will only be relieved by death.

Point 3: Marvell further deals with time and mutability not just as the inevitability of death but
as the inevitable change in a person as they grow older. In little TC and young love, Marvell
deals with an alternative definition of love, as innocent, pure and sweet but emphasises the
transience of this state, emphasising that it will end with the end of childhood over the
passage of time and ultimately become an experience of pain.
● In Little TC, he contrasts the characterisation of TC as treasured and even loved by
the gods, “Darling of the Gods”, in her youth with the characterisation of her as the
cruel maiden whose “chaster laws”, even the gods, represented by “Love” “fear”,
 suggesting that rather than being loved and protected by the gods as their “Darling”
the gods must hide from her.
● This contrast between the state of innocence and the cruel, terrifying image is further
brought out in the characterisation of TC as a “nymph” in her younger days, a nature
spirit, “ly[ing]” in “green grass” a pastoral image of repose that associates her with
pastoral innocence. She only “tames” the “wilder flowers” with her “fair aspect”,
showing how as a child she also exerted power with her beauty yet in a much
sweeter way - merely “tam[ing]”, not utterly defeating.
● This passive and innocent image of TC playing in the grass is juxtaposed against the
martial image of TC as a cruel mistress utterly defeating even the god of love, leaving
him with his “bow broke and ensigns torn”, bereft of weapon and with his banners
ripped, an image of total military surrender. This overturns the passiveness of TC as
a garden nymph, only “tam[ing]” the “wilder flowers” with her “fair aspect”, showing
how as a child she also exerted power with her beauty yet in a much sweeter way -
merely “tam[ing]”, not utterly defeating. The “fair aspect”, further suggests purity with
fair being associated with lightness and therefore innocence and purity. This is
contrasted further against her weapons of choice as the cruel mistress, her
“conquering eyes”, an image of military aggression by a sensually alluring part of a
woman, her eyes.
● Hence, TC is shown to inevitably become cruel and impure, no longer innocent as
she grows up. This change is made clear by Marvell equating the 2 seemingly
disparate images of innocence and cruelty with “yet this is she” suggesting that the
same little TC will inevitably mutate into the cruel mistress.
● Marvell expounds on this innocent beauty in young love where he idealises the pure
and innocent love of a young child as an alternate and superior form of love.
○ “Come little infant, love me now/ while thine unsuspected years/ clear thine aged
father’s brow/ from cold jealousy and fears” → this love takes on a rejuvenating
quality, “clear[ing]” him of “cold jealousy and fears” with its complete
innocence.
○ This love’s chaste innocence as characterised as rejuvenating. It is
characterised as “free[ing]”, “as free as the nurses with the child” suggesting
its complete innocence and complete lack of lustful influences as a more
unbounded experience and hence one of greater joy ??
○ “Whose fair blossoms are too green/ yet for lust, but not for love” → The image of
the “green” plant conjures the idea of a bud that has not bloomed, emphasising that
she is so young, not fully grown enough for the traditional flowering of love that. Yet
that this “green” plant still “blossom[s]” suggests a redefinition of love where the
flower may “blossom” and still be “green”, suggesting a love that retains the youthful
qualities of innocence and purity.
● Similarly, the in the “Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Fawn”, the nymph
suggests her relationship with the Fawn was so perfect for it was imbued with the
innocence of youth.
○ Questions whether the passage of time would have ruined the love she had
for the fawn: “Had it lived long, I do not know/ whether it too might have been so/
as sylvio” → her only reservation about the fawn, a word that in itself emphasises its
youth (rather than deer), shows how the entirety of their relationship was virtuous and
utterly incorruptible, sweet and innocent
Point 4: Marvell extends this discussion on time and mutability to power and rulership,
where the revolutionary force of Cromwell in “An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from
Ireland” is contrasted with “Upon the Hill and Grove at Bilbrough”, in which Lord Fairfax’s
power is drawn from its classical inheritance
● Cromwell as a force of destruction of old systems, “blast[ing” through “Caesar’s
head”, finding himself to be an inevitable force in the leadership position, instigating a
revolutionary change that is shocking and destructive in nature.
● “And ruin the great work of time/ and cast the kingdoms old into another mold”
○ Restructuring of an old and irrelevant system, reshaping it according to his
own vision
● “The same arts that did gain A power, must it maintain”
○ As Cromwell gains power through arts of war, to stand the test of time and
maintain his grip on power, he must “maintain” his victory in warfare. His
heroic figure necessitates him to sustain the fighting and hence to possess
immutable power.

On the other hand, Fairfax does not prize change and upheaval like Cromwell, but rather
prides himself in the maintenance of an Ancient tradition,
● as can be seen from Marvell’s description of the ‘aged trees’ in Fairfax’s grove:
● He states that no ‘hostile hand durst here invade / With impious steel, the sacred
shade’: indicating how Fairfax is associated with an abode of undisturbed,
unchanging tranquility
● the fact that the grove has some sort of sacrosanct quality as an ancient, storied
forest indicates how there is some sense of an unbroken continuity of tradition or
heritage which carries on past all the flux of time
● They ‘now no farther strive to shoot. Contented if they fix their root’: indicates
Fairfax’s desire not to overstretch and all, but to remain rooted and connected to
one’s origins and traditions
DEFINE TIME AND MUTABILITY:
- Mutability: tendency to change
- Time: associated with the inevitability of death, maturity vs youth, decay and the loss
of beauty

Both poets ponder on the short time man has on earth and how that time must be
maximised. However, where Sidney finds the time he spends in pursuit of stella not actually
a waste ???
For since mad March great promise made of me,
If now the May of my years much decline,
What can be hoped my harvest time will be?

Immutability of the mistress’ cruelty/indifference/unreciprocation

- Sonnet 12 (Stella’s reciprocation is not easily won, “all the skill and pain
- ** a better poem to use might be to his coy mistress “till the conversion of the jews’

Preservation of innocence: time as causing the inevitable end of innocence →

- Nymph complaining for the death of her fawn
- “Had it lived long, I do not know/ whether it too might have been so/ as sylvio” →
her only reservation about the fawn, a word that in itself emphasises its youth (rather
than deer), shows how the entirety of their relationship was virtuous and utterly
incorruptible, sweet and innocent
- Little TC
- “Yet this is she whose chaster laws/ The wanton Love shall one day fear”
- “Then let me in time compound and parley with those conquering eyes” → coming to
terms
- Young Love
- “Whose fair blossoms are too green/ yet for lust, but not for love” → The image of
the “green” plant conjures the idea of a bud that has not bloomed, emphasising that
she is so young, not fully grown enough for the traditional flowering of love that. Yet
that this “green” plant still “blossom[s]” suggests a redefinition of love where the
flower may “blossom” and still be “green”, suggesting a love that retains the youthful
qualities of innocence and purity.
- “Come little infant, love me now/ while thine unsuspected years/ clear thine aged
father’s brow/ from cold jealousy and fears” → youth as a purifying and

Marvell lauds the soul’s immutable yearning towards higher virtues and values? While
Sidney shows
- Resolved soul and created pleasures