I need to contrast "To His Coy Mistress" with "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love."

These are two great poems and I am sure you will find much
to talk about. A good place to start though is to consider what obvious similarities and
differences there are concerning the theme or message of the poem. Both poems are an
invitation to love and feature a male speaker entreating his beloved to embark on a
relationship with him. Both also fit into the "carpe diem" school of poetry, in that the
speaker urges the woman to "seize the day" and respond to this invitation now, living
life to its fullest straight away rather than postponing life until
tomorrow.

In "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love," the
speaker urges his love to "Come live with me," outlining some of the simple pleasures of
life in the countryside. He goes into great detail about the wonderful things he will
craft for his love, including slippers with gold buckles and beds of roses, and promises
that young shepherd boys will dance and sing for her pleasure every May morning. The
poem is one of temptation, as the speaker conveniently ignores the hardships of life in
the countryside and focuses on the pastoral beauty of such a
life.

In "To His Coy Mistress," the speaker uses hyperbole
to describe the way he would like to show his love to his beloved if there was only time
to do so. He refers to his "vegetable love" growing "vaster than empires and more slow."
However, in one of the most famous lines of this poem, he refers to the ever-present
pressure of time:

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But at my back I always
hear

Time's winged chariot hurrying
near;

And yonder all before us
lie

Deserts of vast
eternity.

Life is brief, the
speaker tells his beloved. Then, in the final section of the poem, in a defiant tone, he
urges her to extract what pleasures she can from life, because time cannot be made to
halt or pause whilst we play at being "coy."

So, whilst
there are obvious similarities in theme and message, you might have noticed that "To His
Coy Mistress" places far more emphasis on the effects of time, whereas "The Passionate
Shepherd to His Love" does not focus on the brevity of time so much. Of course there are
other differences, but hopefully this will get you started. Good
luck!