Commentary on To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time Essay

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying. Take advantage of all the opportunities that come your way, they will never boomerang and come right back to you again. In the 1648 poem, To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time, Robert Herrick uses the controlling metaphor of embracing ones purity to express the complex attitude of the speaker.

To maintain a more relaxed and inviting tone, Herricks diction emphasizes a carpe diem theme to the audience (clearly stated in the title) in an attempt to persuade them to make much of time. It is obvious that the speaker is a male talking to females because the first stanza of the poem talks about flowers. A typical clich of primary male interaction; giving flowers to a girl during their first date to capture her attention and sweep her off her feet, so to speak. But being a lady myself, when I came across the word flower in the poem, it somehow evoked me to think about ovaries and other female reproductive organs. Intentional on Herricks part, Im sure.

Introducing the audience to two different scenarios, Herrick depicts a situation through opposite perspectives in each line. this same flower that smiles today, Tomorrow will be dyingage is best which is the first, but being spent, the worse, and worst times still succeed the former. If one thing is happening right now, something else will be happening later. While trying to find clarity in Herricks diction, one suggested that in the line "Then be not coy, but use your times" connotes not be phony or hide anything, and do not play around with your time yet in the following line he says and while you do get married. At the last line "you may forever tarry" , the interpretation is that one is always going to wait for opportunity to come again but we live in a society where chance makes an escape and no matter how long we wait for it to come, it never will and you will regret that time that you did not utilize.

The attitude of the speaker may be well-concentrated on encouraging the audience to go outside their boundaries and loosen up as we might say today. The deeper purpose of the poem is to savor your childhood and innocence while still being capable of doing so. One beneficiary aspect of youth is the ability to enjoy. Enjoy time, enjoy no worries, and enjoy life as it is. But not only to take pleasure during adolescence, but to uphold all the possibilities that will come along as well, such as getting married.