Questions on Carpe Diem Poets

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3. Each of the poem’s sections forms a part of the speaker’s argument. The first section is the hypothetical, the “if,” if they were to get married. The second shows what will happen if they don’t get married. The third sums up why they should get married. The sections help to present his argument clearly and logically.

1. Herrick uses images in lines 1–4 to convey the idea of passing time by relating the brevity of life to the buds of roses, showing how life is as short as a rose’s life.

4. The attitude toward love the third stanza of “Song” reflects is if something does not love then no man can have her and thus the devil should take her.

1. “Vaster”: his love would be grand. “Hurrying”: life is ending quickly. “Languish”: souls wither when they are not with someone else.

2. The speaker’s attitude in Suckling’s “Song” undergoes a change in the third stanza. Instead of asking why the lover does not choose someone as her mate, he scorns her and tells her to be with the devil if she does not choose someone.

1. “To His Coy Mistress”: “Had we but world enough, and time, / This coyness lady were no crime.” The speaker says that if humans were to live forever then love would be no crime. However, since we don’t, we must act and seize the day and get married. “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time”: “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, / Old time is still a-flying; / And this same flower that smiles today / Tomorrow will be dying.” The speaker compares life to the shortness of flowers, showing the delicacy of life and the brevity.

2. I like “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” better because it is shorter and more succinct. It also has more vivid metaphors that are easily understandable and better shows the brevity of life and how we must seize the day.

3. Sir John Suckling’s “Song” continues with the theme of carpe diem by showing how the lover must act quickly and marry her lover now or else be forced to live with the devil. However, it deviates from the theme because it puts the decision in the woman’s hands and not in the man’s. It also suggests a more frightening consequence if we don’t seize the day.

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.

1. Herrick’s speaker feels that the most best time to marry is in one’s prime.

2. He says that old age is worser than youth.

3. In “Song,” the speaker suggests that the bestest thing to do is to find someone else.

4. All three poems imply that one of the baddest worse things you can do is to waste time.