Love and Time: A Comparison of Hardy's 'Beyond the Last lamp' and Marvell's 'To his Coy Mistress' Ella Jones 12th Grade

Hardy’s ‘Beyond the Last Lamp’ presents the theme of love and time in a subtler way than Marvell’s poem, as we only realize the retrospective nature of the poem at the fourth stanza, and see that his memory of the couple’s difficulty has stayed with him through “thirty years of blur and blot”. ‘To His Coy Mistress’ is more brazen in its presentation of love and time as inextricably linked. Romantic love is presented as being constrained by the shifting sands of time, and from this the speaker makes the case that physical desires should be indulged before the onset of “Time’s winged chariot”.

The title ‘Beyond the Last Lamp’ can be read both literally and metaphorically. The phrase ‘beyond the last lone lamp’ could simply be a visual image of where the couple are standing, and this literal interpretation is supported by the extension of the title as ‘Beyond the Last Lamp (Near Tooting Common)’’. However, the lexical choice in using ‘last’ instead of simply ‘Beyond the Lamp’ lends a sense of deliberate finality, and gives the first hint of time as a major theme within the poem. There is a clear link to endings, and the metaphor of stepping in to the unknown, perhaps of their relationship, is demonstrated by the couple walking...