To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time


"To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time" is a poem written by English Cavalier poet Robert Herrick in the 17th century. The poem is in the genre of carpe diem, Latin for seize the day.

Text

Theme: ''carpe diem''

First published in 1648 as number 208 in a volume of verse entitled Hesperides, it is perhaps one of the most famous poems to extol the notion of carpe diem, a philosophy that recognizes the brevity of life and, therefore, the need to live for and in the moment. The phrase originates in Horace's Ode.

Possible influences/origins

The opening line, "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may", echoes the Latin phrase collige, virgo, rosas, which appears at the end of the poem "De rosis nascentibus", also called "Idyllium de rosis", attributed to Ausonius or Virgil.
In the second book of Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, a young man in the Bower of Bliss sings, "Gather therefore the Rose, whilest yet is prime,/ For soone comes age, that will her pride deflowre:/ Gather the Rose of love, whilest yet is time,/ Whilest loving thou mayst loved be with equall crime."
The first line and the theme of the poem also echo a well-known couplet in Shakespeare's Sonnet 18:
Nearly the same sense was expressed thousands of years earlier in Wisdom of Solomon 2:8, "Let us crown ourselves with rosebuds before they wither", a verse ironically given as the example of a fool's reasoning in denying the resurrection of the dead and turning to licence.