Module 21

Carpe Diem

Module Prepared by- Dr. Kalyani Dixit, Lucknow

General Introduction

In this module the Carpe Diem will be discussed at length, which means ‗seize the day‘. It lays emphasis on
the ‗enjoyment of the day‘ because we get human life just for once. This human life itself is very short. Poets
like Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey, Ben Jonson, Thomas Campion, Thomas Carew, Samuel Daniel,
Michael Drayton, William Shakespeare, Robert Harrick, and Andrew Marvell composed some remarkable
carpe diems. The module will throw light on some well known carpe diems composed by some extremely
gifted poets.

MODULE 21

Carpe diem is originally a Latin term which is used as an admonition to capture the rapture of the
moment without concern for the future.

Carpe + Diem = Carpe Diem.

I I I

Seize + Day = Seize the Day.

Horace, an eminent Roman poet used this term in his odes. In Odes, Book1, and Number11 he writes:
‗Spem longam reseces. dum loq uimur fugerit invida aetas : carpe diem , quam minimum credula postero’.
Which means ―to a short period. While we speak, envious time will have (already) fled: seize the day trusting
as little as possible in the next (day) [/ future].‖ The ode conveys us the message of Horace that the future is
unexpected or unforeseen so one must enjoy the life only today. Carpe Diem also defines the ‗destructiveness
of all devouring time‘.

Sir Walter Ralegh (1552 – 1618), one of the leading personalities at the court of Queen Elizabeth also
tried his pen on Carpe Diem. In his poem entitled ‗Nature, That Washed Her Hands‘, he portrayed time as
destroyer and addressed it as ‗cruel time‘:

But time (which nature doth despise

 And rudely gives her love the lie,

Makes hope a fool, and sorrow wise,

His hands do neither wash nor dry;

But being made of steel and rust,

Turns show and silk and milk to dust.

The light, the bulky, lips and breath,

He dims, discolours, and destroys;

With those he feeds but fills not death,

Which sometimes were the food of joys.

Yea, time doth dull each lively wit,

And dries all wantonness with it.

Oh, cruel time! Which takes in trust

Our youth, our joys, and all we have,

And pays us but with age and dust;

Who in the dark and silent grave

When we have wandered all our ways

Shuts up the story of our days.

Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey composed a poem entitled Brittle Beauty on the theme of Carpe Diem.
Beauty is short lived and frail. This poem is also known as The Frailty and Hurtfulness of Beauty.

Brittle beauty, that Nature made so frail,

Whereof the gift is small, and short the season;
Flowering to-day, to-morrow apt to fail;
Tickle treasure, abhorred of reason:
Dangerous to deal with, vain, of none avail;
Costly in keeping, past not worth two peason;
Slipper in sliding, as is an eel's tail;
Hard to obtain, once gotten, not geason:
Jewel of jeopardy, that peril doth assail;
False and untrue, enticed oft to treason;
Enemy to youth, that most may I bewail;
Ah! bitter sweet, infecting as the poison,
Thou farest as fruit that with the frost is taken;
To-day ready ripe, tomorrow all to-shaken.
 Thomas Campion also contributed some precious Carpe Diems to the English poetry. His poem My Sweetest
Lesbia again expresses his desire to find and enjoy love before the time of death. My Sweetest Lesbia by
Thomas Campion ‗is in the style of the Roman Poet Catullus ‗a rather bawdy poet whose works are generally
toned down in translation. Catullus, if he was anything like his poems, certainly seized the day‘.
(http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/subjIdx/carpe ….)

My sweetest Lesbia, let us live and love,

And though the sager sort our deeds reprove,

Let us not weigh them. Heaven's great lamps do dive

Into their west, and straight again revive,

But soon as once set is our little light,

Then must we sleep one ever-during night.

If all would lead their lives in love like me,

Then bloody swords and armour should not be;

No drum nor trumpet peaceful sleeps should move,

Unless alarm came from the camp of love.

But fools do live, and waste their little light,

And seek with pain their ever-during night.

When timely death my life and fortune ends,

Let not my hearse be vexed with mourning friends,

But let all lovers, rich in triumph, come

And with sweet pastimes grace my happy tomb;

And Lesbia, close up thou my little light,

And crown with love my ever-during night.

 Thomas Carew‘s Song: Persuasions to Enjoy inspires Celia to enjoy the life since the time destroys all
goodly fruits. Carpe diem poems are also called ―Persuasions‖.

If the quick spirits in your eye

Now languish, and anon must die;

If every sweet, and every grace

Must fly from that forsaken face;

Then, Celia, let us reap our joys,

Ere Time such goodly fruit destroys.

Or if that golden fleece must grow

Forever, free from aged snow;

If those bright suns must know no shade,

Nor your fresh beauties ever fade;

Then fear not, Celia, to bestow

What, still being gathered, still must grow.

Thus, either Time his sickle brings

In vain, or else in vain his wings.

Samuel Daniel, the composer of Astrophel and Stella also wrote sonnets on the theme of Carpe diem. As
per Satya Prasad Sengupta: ‗The theme is Carpe diem, the destructiveness of the all –devouring Time.‘ He
also wrote that the time will take away the beauty of the beloved:

When men shall find thy flower, thy glory pass,

And thou with careful brow sitting alone:

Received hast this message from thy glass,

That tells thee truth, and says that all is gone.

He also writes:

Her beauty now the burden of my song

Whose glorious blaze the world‘s eye doth admire,

Must yield her praise to tyrant time‘s desire,

Then fades the flower, which fed her pride so long;

When, if she grieve to gaze in her glass

Which then presents her winter wither‘d hue.

Samuel Daniel composed ‗Another Song‘ (from Thethys Festival). In this song again he writes on the theme
of Carpe diem:

Are they shadows that we see?

And can shadows pleasure give?

Pleasures only shadows be

Cast by bodies we conceive

And are made the things we deem

In those figures which they seem.

But these pleasures vanish fast

Which by shadows are expressed;

Pleasures are not, if they last;

In their passing is their best.

Glory is most bright and gay

In a flash, and so away.

Feed apace then, greedy eyes,

On the wonder you behold;

Take it sudden as it flies,

Though you take it not to hold.

When your eyes have done their part,

Though must length it in the heart.

Delia is a remarkable collection by Danial. Here in Sonnet LV he wants to sing for the fair eyes of his
beloved, and thus he would immortalise her:

These are the Arks, the Trophies I erect

That fortify thy name against old age,

And these thy sacred virtues must protect

Against the dark and Time‘s consuming rage.

Though th‘ error of my youth they shall discover,

Suffice they show I liv‘d and was thy lover.

In Sonnet L he compares his ‗sweet love‘ with ‗morning dew‘ but the time‘s destructive attitude clears
away anything. He finds the glory of the blushing Rose short. In this beautiful poem he writes:

Beauty, sweet love, is like the morning dew

Whose short refresh upon the tender green

Cheers for a time but till the sun doth show,

And straight ‘tis gone as it had never been.

Soon doth it fade that makes the fairest flourish;

Short is the glory of the blushing Rose,

The hue which thou so carefully dost nourish

Yet which at length thou must be forc‘d to lose.

When thou surcharg‘d with burden of thy years

Shalt bend thy wrinkles homeward to the earth,

When Time hath made a passport for thy fears,

Dated in age the Kalends of our death –

But, ah, no more: this hath often told,

And women grieve to think they must be old.

Michel Drayton wrote a sonnet sequence entitled Idea containing sixty three sonnets. Michael Drayton in his
Sonnet VIII expresses his fear for the destructive power of time that will diminish the beauty of the beloved.
He does not want to see his beloved‘s beauty decaying. He writes;

There's nothing grieves me, but that Age should haste,

That in my days I may not see thee old,
That where those two clear sparkling eyes are plac'd
Only two loop-holes then I might behold;
That lovely, arched, ivory, polish'd brow
Defac'd with wrinkles that I might but see;
Thy dainty hair, so curl'd and crisped now,
Like grizzled moss upon some aged tree;
Thy cheek, now flush with roses, sunk and lean;
Thy lips with age as any wafer thin;
Thy pearly teeth out of thy head so clean
That, when thou feed'st, thy nose shall touch thy chin.
These lines that now thou scorn'st, which should delight thee,
Then would I make thee read but to despite thee.
It is the legendry bird phoenix that can defeat the time. He compares his beloved to the phoenix and this way
he can see her live beyond the time.
 'Mongst all the creatures in this spacious round
Of the birds' kind, the Phoenix is alone,
Which best by you of living things is known;
None like to that, none like to you is found.
Your beauty is the hot and splend'rous sun,
The precious spices be your chaste desire,
Which being kindled by that heav'nly fire,
Your life so like the Phoenix's begun;
Yourself thus burned in that sacred flame,
With so rare sweetness all the heavens perfuming,
Again increasing as you are consuming,
Only by dying born the very same;
And, wing'd by fame, you to the stars ascend,
So you of time shall live beyond the end.
In Sonnet XVII he addresses the ‗speedy time‘. Here he suggests the time to look himself into in a glass.

Stay, speedy Time, behold, before thou pass,

From age to age what thou hast sought to see,
One in whom all the excellencies be,
In whom Heav'n looks itself as in a glass.
Time, look thyself in this tralucent glass,
And thy youth past in this pure mirror see,
As the world's beauty in his infancy,
What is was then, and thou before it was.
Pass on, and to posterity tell this,
Yet see thou tell but truly what hath been;
Say to our nephews that thou once hast seen
In perfect human shape all heav'nly bliss,
And bid them mourn, nay more, despair with thee,
That she is gone, her like again to see.
Love also loses its virtues by the passage of time. Same theme has been taken up by him in Sonnet XXVII

Is not Love here as 'tis in other climes,

And differeth it, as do the several nations?
Or hath it lost the virtue with the times,
Or in this island altereth with the fashions?
Or have our passions lesser power than theirs,
Who had less art them lively to express?
Is Nature grown less powerful in their heirs,
Or in our fathers did she more transgress?
I am sure my sighs come from a heart as true
As any man's that memory can boast,
And my respects and services to you
Equal with his that loves his mistress most.
Or nature must be partial to my cause,
Or only you do violate her laws
 Just like Shakespeare he wishes to eternize his beloved by the power of his pen. He calls the time
‗tyrannizing‘ and compares it to Medea. To spare his beloved from the curse of oblivion and grave he is ready
to cherish her forever in his rhymes.

Whilst thus my pen strives to eternize thee,

Age rules my lines with wrinkles in my face,
Where in the map of all my misery
Is modell'd out the world of my disgrace.
Whilst, in despite of tyrannizing times,
Medea-like, I make thee young again,
Proudly thou scorn'st my world-outwearing rhymes
And murtherest virtue with thy coy disdain.
And though in youth my youth untimely perish,
To keep thee from oblivion and the grave
Ensuing ages yet my rhymes shall cherish,
When I entomb'd, my better part shall save;
And though this earthly body fade and die,
My name shall mount upon eternity. ( Sonnet XLIV)

Again in Sonnet LX he is ready to use his pen in order to defeat the time and immortalize his love.

Define my weal, and tell the joys of Heav'n;

Express my woes, and show the pains of Hell;
Declare what fate unlucky stars have giv'n,
And ask a world upon my life to dwell;
Make known the faith that Fortune could not move;
Compare my worth with others' base desert;
Let virtue be the touchstone of my love,
So may the heav'ns read wonders in my heart;
Behold the clouds which have eclips'd my sun,
And view the crosses which my course do let;
Tell me if ever since the world begun
So fair a rising had so foul a set,
And see if Time (if he would strive to prove)
Can show a second to so pure a love.
William Shakespeare also wrote on the theme of Carpe diem in his sonnets and plays. He projected time as
all devouring in his sonnets. Caroline Spurgeon writes that: ―Everything seems to come under the dominion of
time --- youth, beauty, strength, even life itself ---‘ save only love which is ‗not time‘s fool.‘ Wounded
Hotspur in Henry IV cries that ‗But thought‘s the slave of life, and life‘s time‘s fool.‘ (5.4.81). But in Troilus
and Cressida, he writes:

flies the grasps of love

With wings more momentary - swift thant thought. (4.2.11.14)

He portrays it as a killer who strangles lover‘s vows. Caroline Spurgeon writes about such speeches in Troilus
and Cressida: ‗…we feel that what he cannot forgive time is that it seems to hurt, change, diminish and even
to destroy love.‘(pg.779). He further writes that: ‗Love is apparently killed by time, only because it transcends
time; and its spiritual infinite essence cannot be confined within the limitations of a material finite world.‘
(pg.180) In Act III scene III of Troilus and Cressida Ulysses says;

Beauty wit.

High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service,

Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all

To envious and culminating time.

Shakespeare presented all men as time‘s subjects. In Act I, scene III, Henry IV he writes:

Eating the air in promises of supply,

Flattering himself in project of a power

Much smaller than the smallest of his thoughts

And so, with great imagination

Proper to madmen, led his powers to death,

And winking leap‘d into destruction.

In the same play at one place he defines the destructive power of time in these words:

We see which the stream of time doth run,

And our enforced from our most quite shore

By the rough torrent of occasion.

The time misordered doth, in common sense,

Crowd us and crush us to this monstrous form,

To hold our safety up.

―William Shakespeare‘s high comedy, ―Twelfth Night, or, What You Will,‖ (1600), centers on themes of love
– unrequited love, lost love, secret love, fickle love. But another theme is also explored – carpe diem, or
―seize the day.‖ The idea that we should embrace life and live it to the fullest and in the present was a very
modern philosophy for Shakespeare (1564-1616) to tuck into a 17th Century play.‖
(http://www.search.ask.com/web?q=carpediem+in+elizabethan+age&apn_dtid=%5EIME001%5EYY%5EIN
&d=1...)
O mistress mine, where are you roaming?

O, stay and hear! your true-love‘s coming,

That can sing both high and low.

Trip no further, pretty sweeting,

Journeys end in lovers meeting—

Every wise man‘s son doth know.

What is love? ‘Tis not hereafter;

Present mirth hath present laughter;

What‘s to come is still unsure:

In delay there lies no plenty;

Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,

Youth‘s a stuff will not endure.

Sonnet 12 portrays the power of time, which is without mercy. Time causes gradual decay of all objects.
Time is all powerful. The poem presents the images of summer and of snow in winter. The poem contains a
message that time stops for none. In order to gain immortality one has to produce children. The poem ends
with the following couplet:

And nothing ‘gainst Time‘s scythe can make defense

Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

Sonnet 15 also reveals the decaying nature of time that makes human existence and beauty transitory.
Because all physical things decay over time. But sonnets can immortalize the beauty of Fair Youth.

Then the conceit of this inconsistent stay

Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,

Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay,

To change your day of youth to sullied night.

And all in war with Time for love of you,

As he takes from you, I engraft you new.

L.C. Knights in his book Some Shakespearean Themes rightly writes that Time is ‗one of the most
consistently developed themes of Shakespeare‘s sonnets‘ in which ‗the linguistic vitality is highest‘. About
sonnet, 12 and 15 he writes that: ―One reason of course why Time comes into the picture at all is that many of
the sonnets are about ways of defeating him – getting married and having children, or writing immortal verse,
or, best of all, loving so truly that Time can make no difference. But the poet is not interested in the young
patron‘s posterity with the same intensity of concern that is evoked by the signs of beauties passing and even
the magnificent assertion of love‘s independence of Time in Sonnet CXVI.‖

In sonnet 19 the poet addresses the Time as ‗devouring‘ the nature. He requests the Time not to
demolish the beauty of Fair Youth. But he wants to immortalize him in his verses.

Yet doe thy worst old Time despite thy wrong,

My love shall in my verse ever live young.

In sonnet 19, he also writes:

Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion‘s paws,

And make the earth devour her own sweet brood.

Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger‘s jaws,

And burn the long – lived phoenix in her blood.

There are some critics who believe that Shakespeare was concerned with Carpe Diem, the briefness of
beauty and the devouring power of time. But in sonnet 116 he establishes the power of love that transcends the
limitations of Time. Where he writes:

Love‘s not Time‘s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle‘s compass come.

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom:

F.E. Halliday in his book The Poetry of Shakespeare‘s Plays writes: ―Swift- footed time is devourer of
the wide world‘s fading sweets and Shakespeare feels a great pity for men and women by ‗Time‘s injurious
hand crushed and o‘erworn‘. Time and its cruel destructive power its slow sapping of beauty, is the
melancholy inspiration of much of Shakespeare‘s poetry‖.

In again Sonnet 49 he writes against time. Each quatrain starts with a phrase ‗Against that time.‘ The first
quatrain opens with following lines:

Against that time, if ever that time come,

When I shall see thee frown on my defects,

When as thy love hath cast his utmost sum,…

In the second quatrain he writes: ‗Against that time when‘ the fair youth ‗shalt strangely pass / And
scarcely greet‘ him ‗with the sun‘ in his eyes.

Sonnet 60 again deals with the power of time. Here the poet uses words like ‗waves‘ and ‗minuts‘
in order to symbolize time. ‗The pebbled shore‘ symbolizes the death.

Like as the waves make toward the pebbled shore,

So do our minutes hasten to their end…

The time imparts life to us and also snatches it away. ‗And Time that gave doth now his gift
confound‘. Time‘s destructive nature as taken up by Shakespeare in his sonnets has been commented by many
critics. Shakespeare portrays time as ‗Injurious shifting, wasteful, a devourer, a spoiler and a thief, he
swallows up cities and defaces proud buildings, is an eater of youth, ‗feeds on the rarities of nature‘s truth‘
and devours good deeds past as fast as they are made, he steals minutes and hours, wrecks and despoils
beauty,

And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.

This at least is one mood – and the most constant - in which Shakespeare sees time, and, like many of his
pictures of death, it is an entirely mediaeval conception he has before him of the ‗cormorant‘ devourer, the
‗bloody tyrant‘, the all powerful reaper with his scythe‘. (Caroline Spurgeon – pg – 176)

In sonnet 63 he address time as ‗injurious‘, who crushes individuals and steals away the treasure of
spring. He writes: ‗For such a time do I now fortify/ Against confounding age‘s cruel knife,/ That he shall
never cut from memory / My sweet love‘s beauty though my lover‘s life; …‖ The very next sonnet also
reflects the poets‘ struggle against Time that is the arch – devourer. The poet seems to suffer from the fear that
the death will ‗take my (his) love away‘. But unlike sonnet 60, this sonnet ends with a depressing mood and
tone:

This thought is as death, which cannot choose

But weep to have that which it fears to lose.

All strong things like brass, stone, boundless sea and love are perishable. But in black ink he can provide
immortality to the beauty of his friend.

Oh, none, unless this miracle have might,

That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

Mirror reflects the image of old age. The poet gifts a notebook to his friend in which he can record his
experiences. The hands of a clock indicate the time‘s thievish progress to eternity‘.

The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show

Of mouthed graves will give thee memory;

(Sonnet 77)

In sonnet 100 he invokes the muse to satirize time‘s destructive and aging powers, and to prevent
time‘s knife from cutting the beauty of his fair friend.

Rise, resty Muse; my love‘s sweet face survey,

If time have any wrinkle graven there;

If any, be a satire to decay,

And make time‘s spoils despised everywhere.

Give my love fame faster than time wastes life.

So thou prevent‘st his scythe and crooked knife. (100)

The effect of time can be seen on the face of the Fair Youth. The sweet beauty of the friend is also
changing.

‗Ah yet doth beauty, like a dial hand,

Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived;

So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,

Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived. (104)

He writes that ‗to me fair friend, you never can be old‘. Under the blessings of time he finds his
beloved fresh and beautiful. ‗Now with the drops of this most balmy time / My love looks fresh, and death to
me subscribe…‖ (107)

The ‗reckoning time‘s‘ millions of accidents creep in between the lover‘s promises, and they can change
even the ‗decrees of kings‘, they can ‗tan the sacred beauty‘, and ‗blunt the sharpest intents‘. He is not afraid
of ‗time‘s tyranny‘.

Alas, why, fearing of time‘s tyranny,

Might I not then say, ―Now I love you best‖,

When I was certain o‘er incertainty,

Crowning the present, doubting of the rest? (115)

True love never shakes and changes because of impediments and storms. Love cannot be destroyed by
the time‘s sharp sickle. Physical beauty can wither under time‘s destructive power but the true love lasts till
the doomsday.

Love‘s not time‘s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle‘s compass come:

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved. (116)

L.C.Knights rightly writes that sonnet 116 ‗is set over against what the imagination has made most real‘
there are whole tracts of experience still to be crossed. What we feel again and again, in those sonnets that are
most powerfully alive, is the sense of Time – The dial‘s shady stealth‘ – summed up in unforgettable image of
the changing seasons and the wasting years‘. (pg – 49 – 50) Sonnet 123 again challenges the might of
destructive Time. He will remain faithful to his friend despite the destructive power of Time.

This I do vow and this shall ever be:

I will be true, despite thy scythe and thee. (123)

In the next sonnet he continues the previous theme. He defines his true and firm love in following
lines:

If my dear love were but the child of state,

It might for Fortune‘s bastard be unfathered,

As subject to time‘s love or to time‘s hate,

Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gathered. (124)

In sonnet 126, the poet refers to the power of time. In spite of the blessings of Nature he should fear
Time‘s destructive power.
She keeps thee to this purpose: that her skill

May time disagree, and wretched minute kill.

Her audit, though delayed, unanswered must be,

And her quietus is to render thee. (126).

Ben Johnson‘s come, My Celia is another example of Carpe diem. He calls his beloved to value love since
the time will not be theirs forever.

COME, my Celia, let us prove

While we may, the sports of love;

Time will not be ours forever;

He at length our good will sever.

Spend not then his gifts in vain.

Suns that set may rise again;

But if once we lose this light,

'Tis with us perpetual night.

Why should we defer our joys?

Fame and rumour are but toys.

Cannot we delude the eyes

Of a few poor household spies,

Or his easier ears beguile,

So removed by our wile?

'Tis no sin love's fruit to steal;

But the sweet theft to reveal.

To be taken, to be seen,

These have crimes accounted been.

Robert Herrick‘s collection of poems entitled Hesperides is noted for the famous carpe diem To the
Virgins, and To Make Much of Time. His poems contain the message that the life is very short, and one must
make the best use of this precious time. In the above mentioned carpe diem he writes:

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

Old time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.
The glorious lamp of heaven the sun,
The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
 And nearer he's to setting.
That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.
Then be not coy, but use your time,
And, while ye may, go marry;
For, having lost but once your prime,
You may forever tarry.

His other famous carpe diems are To Daffodils, To Silvia to Wed, A Lyric to Mirth, On Himself III, To Live
Merrily and to Trust Good Verses, To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time, Best to Be Merry, The Changes to
Corinna, Upon a Delaying Lady, To Live Freely, To Enjoy the Time, To a Bed of Tulips, To Electra (III), An
End Decreed, To Youth, To Be Merry, To Blossoms and Corinna Going a- Maying. Corinna going a- Maying
is a long poem by Harrick. In the final stanza of this poem he calls his beloved to come and enjoy the life
before the death comes.

Come, let us go, while we are in our prime,

And take the harmless folly of the time!
We shall grow old apace, and die
Before we know our liberty.
Our life is short, and our days run
As fast away as does the sun.
And, as a vapor or a drop of rain,
Once lost, can ne'er be found again,
So when you or I are made
A fable, song, or fleeting shade,
All love, all liking, all delight
Lies drowned with us in endless night.
Then, while time serves, and we are but decaying,
Come, my Corinna, come, let's go a-Maying.

In To Daffodills he appreciates the beautiful flowers of daffodils but expresses his grief that these beautiful
flowers fade quickly. He tries to cast a parallel between these flowers and life .

Fair Daffodils, we weep to see

You haste away so soon;

As yet the early – rising sun

Stay, stay

Until the hasting day

Has run

But to the even song;

And, having pray‘d together, we

Will go with you along.

Youth is symbolised by early – rising seen and middle age by noon. Briefness of human life has been
portrayed in the second stanza of this poem:

We have short time to stay, as you,

We have as short a spring;

As quick a growth to meet decay,

As you, or anything.

We die

As your hours do, and dry

Away,

Like to the summer‘s rain;

Or as the pearls of morning‘s dew

Ne‘er be found again.

Human beings also have a short life span just like these daffodils flowers. Human life has been compared with
‗summer‘s rain‘ and ‗pearls of morning dew‘ that disappear in a blink of an eye. So we must enjoy life.

To Blossoms is also a lovely carpe diem. In the opening stanza of this poem he lays emphasis on the shortness
of the life of flowers that symbolize the human life.

FAIR pledges of a fruitful tree,

Why do ye fall so fast?

Your date is not so past

But you may stay yet here a while,

To blush and gently smile;

And go at last.

The poet‘s grief over such a short life span reflects in the second stanza:

What! were ye born to be

An hour or half‘s delight,

 And so to bid good-night?

‗Twas pity Nature brought ye forth

Merely to show your worth,

And lose you quite.

Grave is the ultimate destination of all living and beautiful things in this world. No one can wrestle

with time and death. So spread the fragrance as speedily as possible:

But you are lovely leaves, where we

May read how soon things have

Their end, though ne‘er so brave:

And after have shown their pride

Like you a while, they glide

Into the grave.

Andrew Marvell in his poem To His Coy Mistress persuades his mistress for the physical union. In

first twenty lines he says that he has less time so he can not spend thousands and hundreds of years

just in wooing her. In next twelve lines he describes the heart rending cruelty of time.

But at my back I always hear

Time‘s winged chariot hurrying near;

And yonder all before us lie

Deserts of vast eternity.

Thy beauty shall no more be found,

Nor in thy marble vault shall sound

My echoing song; then worms shall try

That long preserved virginity,

And your quaint honour turn to dust,

And into ashes all my lust.

The grave‘s a fine and private place,

But none, I think, do thee embrace.

In the final stanza of this poem he argues that in ‗loving one another with passion they will both make

the most of the brief time they have to live .‘(http://en.wikepedia.org/wiki/ To –His-Coy –Mistress…)

He also says that no one can pause the time.

The Earl of Surrey finds beauty short-lived, Carew persuades his beloved to enjoy life,
 Daniel finds pleasure vanishing speedily, Drayton sees the effect of time on love and its

virtues, and poets like William Shakespeare and Samuel Daniel try to immortalize the beauty

of their respective loves by singing in verse. Marvell like Harrick tries to persuade his

beloved to love and enjoy the moment. Time‘s destructive power becomes the basic theme of

carpe diem.

Questions

1. What is a Carpe diem? Discuss with suitable examples.

2. Throw some light on the origin of word ‗Carpe diem‘.

3. Write a note on the theme of Carpe diem in Shakespeare‘s sonnets.

4. Discuss Carpe diem as discussion in favour of time‘s destructive power.

5. Give your views on Carpe diem in Samuel Daniel‘s poems. Support your answer with appropriate
examples.

6. Discuss Michael Drayton Idea as a rich collection of Carpe diem.

7. Define Robert Harrick‘s poem ‗To Make Much of Time‘ as a Carpe diem.

8. Write a critical appreciation of Andrew Marvell‘s To His Coy Mistress.

9. Write a note on Carpe diem in Shakespeare‘s plays.

10. Write an essay on the theme of Carpe diem in Elizabethan poetry.

Seize the

Day

Persuasion Pluck the

day

Destructiveness of
Briefness Carpe diem can all devouring time
of life be defined
as

Briefness Suck the

essence of
Of
Indefatigable life only
Beauty today
Speed of
time