SONG
John Donne
Stephanie, Adia and Daijanae
Page 279
Speaker: John Dunne
Occasion: Expressing heart break
Audience: A male friend or a group of male groups
Purpose: to explain how impossible it is to find a true, loyal woman
Hyperbole: Catch a falling star; Ride ten thousand days and nights, etc.
Personification: mandrake’s root
Allusion: Teach me to hear the mermaid’s song (The Odyssey)
Rhyme scheme:

Go and catch a falling star A
Get with child a mandrake root B
Tell me where all past years are A
Or who cleft the devil’s foot B
Teach me to hear mermaid’s singing C
Or to keep off envy’s stinging C
And find d
What wind d
Serves to advance an honest mind d

Mandrakes: they grow under the gallows where the murderers are executed. At midnight when they are pulled from the ground they scream like humans.

Tone: Angry, Cynical, sexist
Theme: There are no faithful women.

The Volta (Italian for turn) occurs on line 21: Yet do not: I would not go


Song, to Celia
Ben Jonson
Elizabeth
Jennifer
Speaker: a lover
Occasion: to show appreciation
Audience: to young beautiful ladies
Purpose: to encourage young ladies to take advantage of their fertility.
Subject: when a lover shows his appreciation to her, she is suppose to be receptive to him, but she rejects him.
Tone: Passionate, Admiring
Theme: A lover should try to be worthy.
Literary devices:
Hyperbole:
Her kisses are more intoxicating than wine.
Allusion:
Jove’s nectar
Roses are associated with beauty and with female sexuality.
By breathing on the wreath she is giving it eternal life which symbolizes female fertility and thus, immortality.

Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May
Robert Herrick
Hayden and Fernanda
Speaker: A man or grandpa
Occasion: speaking wisdom to a young virgin
Audience: To a young virgin
Purpose: To encourage young women to take advantage of their youth and beauty.
The sun represents life, vitality and fertility. The day represents the span of a person’s life.

Sonnets:
Both Elizabethan (Shakespearean) and Italian (Petrarchan) sonnets have fourteen lines.
Rhyme scheme for Elizabethan sonnets:
A
B
A
B
C
D
C
D
E
F
E
F
G
G

PETRARCHAN Rhyme Scheme:

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