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Brittany Kempe

Dr. Blackwell

ENGL 3020

November 28, 2023

Carpe Diem in Poetry

Carpe Diem, or “Seize the Day”, is a term that embodies living life to the fullest in the

little time you have on this Earth. The Carpe Diem theme in poetry is the same as one would

live in life, but poets express it in diverse ways. While one may search for love, one may search

for lust or fulfillment of life’s sensual joys in another way. John Donne, Robert Herrick, and

Andrew Marvell all wrote Carpe Diem poems within the 16th and 17th century when a lady’s

virtue was saved for marriage and her husband. Their approach to their poems is similar in the

Carpe Diem theme but different in the way that they wanted to “Seize the Day”. All three poets,

Donne, Herrick, and Marvell bring a unique perspective of Carpe Diem within their poems, “The

Canonization”, “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time”, and “To His Coy Mistress”.

John Donne’s “The Canonization” poem brings the Carpe Diem theme out through a

love that will last eternally. The speaker is trying to persuade his love into engaging into a

physical and spiritual relationship with him. He wants her to seize the time they have together

before they are married off to other people as was the custom in the days that this poem was

written. “For God’s sake hold your tongue, and let me love,” (Donne line 1), the love between

the speaker and lady is forbidden, as many children were controlled by their parents when it

came to who they could marry (Bryson, p.433). He just wants to be in love and happy. He wants
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more out of a marriage than just what his parents want. He wants a choice to love who he

wants. It is the speaker’s belief that if they can love and seize what they have that, “Us

canonized for love” (Donne, line 36). Canonization is defined as “the formal admission into the

calendar of saints” (Oxford Dictionary). The speaker knows that if he can convince his lady to be

with him that they their love will live on throughout the ages and they will be regarded as

saints. The poem itself is a Carpe Diem poem because it speaks to grasping the moments that

they have and turning them into forever, not just one fleeting moment.

Robert Herricks “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” is about living in the moment

and not thinking about the future, a Carpe Diem poem about lust and taking advantage of the

woman’s youth and beauty. There is no future besides marriage in Herricks poem, so the

question is put forth, why wait? Why not use the beauty and youth that the woman has and

have love affairs before she settles down with a man to marry? This challenges the thinking of

woman in this time period, when virginity was held until marriage. The speaker in this poem has

an urgency to be intimate with this lady and tries to persuade her into being his lover. “Gather

ye rosebuds while ye may, / Old time is still a-flying, / And this same flower that smiles today, /

Tomorrow will be dying.” (Herrick lines 1-4) The speaker is telling the lady to give up her

virginity to him for it will not last forever, her beauty and youth will soon be gone, and she

needs to have sexual encounters before she marries. There is also no mention of what happens

after you die in this poem, “In the absence of an afterlife life must be lived now, and time lost

will never be regained.” (Bryson, p. 446) This quote correlates to the lines of the second stanza

in the poem, “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.” (Herrick lines 5-8) He may speak of heaven,
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but what he is really saying is that death is coming closer every day so take the time to enjoy

life before it ends. Herrick also use of “dying” with a double meaning aligns with the carpe diem

theme. “Dying” is a euphemism for orgasm, but it also relates to the lady dying without having

experienced life. “Refraining from sexual experience means, eventually, dying without having

fully lived, dying unfulfilled;” (Gilead, p. 136). This is what the speaker is trying to convey to the

lady he is trying to seduce into being his lover.

Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” is another Carpe Diem where the speaker is

trying to convince his lady to love him. The mistress in the poem is not his lover but the object

of his desire the woman he wants to seduce into being his lover. He gives off a sense of urgency

to his persuasion, as time is not on their side. He wants her to seize the opportunity to be with

him while they still can be together, “Had we but world enough, and time, / This coyness, Lady,

were no crime.” (Marvell, lines 1-2) The first two lines of the poem is saying that her resistance

to his pursual would be fine if only they had enough time, but as time is always moving forward,

he feels it is a crime against him. Time is the enemy to the speaker, “But at my back I alwaise

hear / Times winged Charriot hurrying near: / And yonder all before us lye / Desarts of vast

Eternity.” (Marvell, lines 21-24). The speaker uses this as a persuasion to let the lady know that

they must take advantage of the time they have before they are thrust into the “vast Eternity”

of death. “There will indeed be endless space and time, the speaker suggests, but not for them

to rule over, to enjoy in courtship, or even to understand.” (Moldenhauer, p. 199). With time

chasing them down, they must make the most of the moment and “seize the day”, be together

before time and death come for them both.

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Donne, Herrick, and Marvell all write Carpe Diem poems to the object of their affection

with some similarities and many differences. All three poets use the time motif to try to

convince their women to make must of the time they have together. All speakers lay out the

importance of seizing the present time as all they have left; they each convey the urgency of

living life to the fullest. The differences very between the poems. Marvell uses a seductive and

persuasive tone to urge his lady to “seize the day”, while Herrick uses a more straightforward

approach to advise the “virgins” to use their youth and beauty for sexual experiences before its

gone, and Donne uses a combination of persuasion and passion to convince his love to be with

him. Their attitudes towards love also vary. Marvell focuses on the beauty and passion of love

with no future beyond death, the time they have on Earth is the only time they will have, and

he wants them to take advantage of the time. Herrick focuses on the beauty of youth and the

fact that beauty is fleeting, youth is when women are to open themselves up to experiences

before they marry and grow old. Donne expresses love as a spiritual and passionate force that

will stand the test of time; their love will live on through them as saints in the afterlife.

While Donne, Herrick and Marvell are different in their approach and the delivery of the

message each of their poems is the same theme, “seize the day” for no one knows what the

future holds. “In work filled with a sense of fragility and shortness of life, these poets contribute

to an ethos that has come to be known by the name carpe diem”, Donne, Herrick and Marvell

have contributed to the genre in their own unique ways. (Bryson, p.421) Donne with his

spiritual and emotional eternal love, Herrick with his celebration of youth and beauty, and

Marvell with his desire for physical intimacy. The different perspectives of these three poets
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bring to life the differences in how people see love and what is important to them in the sense

of time, love, and life.

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Work Cited

Bryson, Michael, and Arpi Movsesian. “Love and Its Costs in Seventeenth-Century Literature.”

Love and Its Critics: From the Song of Songs to Shakespeare and Milton’s Eden, 1st ed.,

Open Book Publishers, 2017, pp. 421–66. JSTOR,

http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1sq5vd6.13. Accessed 30 Nov. 2023.

GILEAD, SARAH. “Ungathering ‘Gather Ye Rosebuds’: Herrick’s Misreading of Carpe Diem.”

Criticism, vol. 27, no. 2, 1985, pp. 133–53. JSTOR,

http://www.jstor.org/stable/23110526. Accessed 30 Nov. 2023.

MOLDENHAUER, JOSEPH J. “The Voices of Seduction in ‘To His Coy Mistress’: A Rhetorical

Analysis.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language, vol. 10, no. 2, 1968, pp. 189–206.

JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40753986. Accessed 30 Nov. 2023.

Herrick, Robert. “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time.” The Longman Anthology: British

literature, vol. 1B Pearson. 2010. Pg 1622.

Donne, John. “The Canonization.” The Longman Anthology: British Literature, vol. 1B, 2010. Pg.

1592-1593.

Marvell, Andrew. “To His Coy Mistress.” The Longman Anthology: British Literature, vol. 1B,

2010. Pg. 1659-1660.