To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time

“To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” is considered to be a carpe diem poem. In Latin, carpe diem means “seize the day.” These poems can be love poems, and they can also focus on “[t]he fleeting nature of life and the need to embrace its pleasures” ("Carpe diem." Poetry Foundation, 2022). Besides Herrick’s poem, other examples of carpe diem poems are Andrew Marvell’s “To Hs Coy Mistress,” John Donne’s “The Flea,” and “O Me! O Life!” by Walt Whitman. The carpe diem genre was popular during the Renaissance period, and it has survived into contemporary literature as well. Yi Wang, in his article “Carpe Diem Revisited in Poetry, Fiction and Film,” analyzes how Horace first used the term before its appropriation by Renaissance writers. This particular genre spoke directly to the people of the Renaissance, for, as Wang notes,

the 16th and 17th century witnessed great social turbulence and transformation in English history. The seventeenth century, it should be remembered, was not only a period of intense religious and philosophical struggle, but a period of revolutionary scientific and philosophical thought (Wang, Yi. "Carpe Diem Revisited in Poetry, Fiction and Film.