ROBERT HERRICK

[1591–1674]

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time

The son of a well-to-do London goldsmith, Robert Herrick (1591–1674) was apprenticed to his uncle (also a goldsmith), studied at Cambridge University, and then lived for nine years in London, where he hobnobbed with a group of poets that included Ben Jonson. Under familial pressure to do something more “worthwhile,” Herrick became an Anglican priest. He was given the parish of Dean Prior, Devonshire—a rural area that he hated at first—and there he quietly wrote poems about imagined mistresses and pagan rites (as in his well-known “Corinna’s Going A-Maying”) and deft but devout religious verse. When he returned to London in 1648, having been ejected from his pulpit by the Puritan revolution, he published his poetry in a volume with two titles, Hesperides for the secular poems and Noble Numbers for those with sacred subjects. Probably his most famous poem is “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time,” a short lyric on the traditional carpe diem theme.

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.