Questions on Poems

To His Coy Mistress

1. Coy: flirtatious; Humber: an estuary in central, northeastern England; Transpires: is revealed; Slow-Chapped: used to explain that time is quickly eating away at them. 
2. The speaker is trying to get his mistress to make love to him because time is leaving them quickly, and with every passing minute, they are getting closer to death. The mistress is being coy because of her religion and unmarried statues, you can see this in the multiple bible references the man makes in his letters. Some are: "Love you ten years before the flood" where the speaker is referring to antediluvian times, and "Till the conversion of the Jews" an allusion to the conversion From Judaism to Christianity. 
3. If we could wait forever, never having to bow under the weight of time, it would make me the happiest man alive. But with every passing day we are aging, and soon, you will wish you had slept with me while you were still young and beautiful. Therefore, if you just slept with me now, there would be no regrets later and worms wouldn't get all up in your business. To be completely honest, I think he has posed a very logical argument, even though it it obviously tainted with multiple, very strong biases. 
4. "Vegetable Love" refers to the author wanting to let their relationship grow and develop- like an eggplant or a squash- so they don't have to rush things. The simile about "amorous birds of prey" contrasts it most, in my opinion, because it's a much harsher image. While vegetables bring forth visuals of health, fertility, and prosperity, birds of prey are violent killers who devour such things.  "Let us roll all our strength and all Our sweetness up into one ball"contrasts the most with the distance because by using world geography, he is attempting to flatter her by placing her in a beautiful, "ruby-laden" place and him in plain ole' England. Now, he is saying they should become one and give all their love and desires to each other. He is complaining because she has left him in England with this dreary body of water while she flaunts her beauty in india, and he wants to be in "India" with her. 
5. "Time's winged chariot hurrying near;" is an allusion to greek mythology by using Apollo's sun chariot. He is saying the end of their 'day' is drawing near. "Deserts of vast eternity." He is comparing the infinite solitude of death to a sweeping desert. He kind of states this in the line before when he is saying that everything lay before them. "Than languish in his slow-chapped power"in this line, he is saying that time is quickly eating away at them, and the longer they do nothing, the more it will devour until there is nothing left. 
6. In the last two lines, the speaker is saying that even though they can't stop time, enjoying each others company as thoroughly as possible may make it go faster. The sun is a metonymy for Time passing. 
7. If the time poem was about time more so than love, he might be saying that time isn't worth anything at all if you don't love something. Whether that something is a woman, a hobby, a favorite pet, or none of those, time will pass anyway, and it's up to you to make your existence matter. In his opinion, sleeping with the woman he loves is what he needs to do.

A Dream Deferred 

1. While the other five images are sensory ones we can easily perceive, the author uses this violent picture, and an image not many can relate to, as a reality call. Dreams aren't always understandable, and a lot of the time, they can't be capped. This last word gives us images of bombs, fireworks, and other things that can't contain themselves, which is very similar to how dreams work.
2. I think he is referring to the inequality of african americans, and how people telling them to put off their dreams of freedom caused them to explode into rioting. He is talking about how his dream was deferred, a dream that most african american people shared. 

The Chimney Sweeper

1. The narrator seems to be an older boy, maybe someone who once believed the same things that young Tom does now, looking on a younger, more naive version of himself and wishing he could be ignorant again. I think the poet is less agonized than the speaker because the narrator has experienced the things he is talking about. I'd be willing to bet that the same boy who is talking has seen dozens of "Tom's" come to the same realization that he has, and become bitter like him. I don't think that's something anyone would relish seeing. The poet is definitely more detached, speaking from an omniscient point of view, showing someone young versus someone older telling of the same story. "Could scarcely cry "'weep! 'weep! 'weep! 'weep!" This is a particularly interesting line because he seems to telling his childhood story without much emotion, especially in the last line of the first stanza. There he states that all he does is sweep chimneys and sleep in soot, very resigned to his fate, because the next stanza, he goes onto explain a very different, less-hardened boy. The narrator brings the character of Young Tom into play in lines 7-8 with an anecdote about trying to shave the boy's head, and how he cried. While the poet begs you to empathize with the boys life style, the narrator seems to tell it like he's seen it before; maybe the speaker is in a position of more authority than originally assumed? In line 24, this is confirmed by saying they won't be harmed if they just do there work, and even though Tom does it happily, the speaker knows it's because he's been lied too, not because he enjoys it. 
2. I think the coffins of black represent their soot-covered lives, and the angels are freeing them from their fate. I think the narrator wants these boys to free because he was once one of them, and there was nothing he wanted more. The green plains represent life outside of being a chimney-sweep. I can't imagine there is much color or vegetation in a chimney, and he longs to see the outside world. Their lives are grey and black; no life, no color, no love.