I was interested in the use of caesura in To His Coy Mistress. In the second stanza, the line the line “My echoing song; then worms shall try” was particularly interesting to me. Placing the semicolon there for an abrupt pause seemed to reinforce the narrator’s assertion that his song would no longer sound by creating an actual silence for the reader. Because the poem is about time moving too quickly, the lines have a quality of rushing by and this one was striking in how it broke that. I also noticed that in the first stanza in which the narrator elaborates on the fantasy of their love in which time is no object, the structure again reinforces the meaning by being itself uncomplicated and idyllic. Only in the second stanza when discussing reality does the narrator break the couplet structure and add elements like caesura in the seventh line.
-Leena
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