Context:
– Carpe Diem – Seize the Day
– Gather ye rosebuds – ‘To the virgins, who make much of time’ Roeber Herrick
Literally:
– First part:
Age represented as the two children(inexperienced, virginal people), watched by an older person
They either go home to their family(WWF), go on a journey outside the village (HB) or go to church and marry (LAQ)
Another person seeing those young people who were strangers to him, he wishes them to be happy and seize the day of pleasure
– Second Part
Theme: Reflection on the idea of seizing the day
the future is something too unpleasant and unpredictable, the concept of seizing the day has been forced on them
–> Anybody who is older is telling you to enjoy your younger life
If you are happy you know that your happy if someone tells you to be happy and smile it won’t actually change their mood in a positive way
– Third Part:
Is it possible to SEIZE the day?
A soon as you are reflecting on the moment, you can’t live in that moment anymore. You can’t be in the present if you think about the past or the future. The present is too much –> frost wants us to be overwhelmed instead of constantly reflecting.
Analysis:
– Structure:
Continuous, its a circle, because you don’t know the beginning, middle or end of time, time is fluid,
End lines, if you try to find constant patterns you won’t find it –> concept of time
– Rhyme Scheme
There is no rhyme scheme highlighting the concept of time (it’s unstructured and unpredictable)
Full stanza, the flow of time
– Stops throughout the poems
Line 11 – full stop, if people actually asking to enjoy you are life they are destroying your flow of life
Line16-17, it destroys the flow of life
Line 9, constant reminder of how you’re supposed to live your life
Line 5 – every time there is a reminder to be happy, anytime there is a chime or other noise it shows that time is going
– Hyperboles and repetition
Line 9 – “happy, happy, happy”, increased force on you to be happy
Interruption of the flow of life
– Anastrophe (inversion)
–> Yoda speaking,
Line 14-16, 17 – the focus is on the danger and warning, lovers are overwhelmed by people telling them to take their happiness
–> If you try to take that happiness with you, you don’t live in the moment anymore and therefore are not happy anymore
Hyperbaton:
– Inversion of one line vs anastrophe being over several lines –> ‘Age’ as an inverse repetition
– Age lives in the future, while it is speaking ‘Seize the day’, they are talking about the past of the children
– causes you to stop the reading flow: reader having to reread the poem is not living in the moment anymore, they have to go back to the past, ruining the flow/moment
Repetition:
– ‘ward’ – repetition of suffix–> direction: going towards the future, BUT the poem is written in the present
– ‘happy’ – the only way to be happy is to seize the day of pleasure, can only be in the present –> Author contradicts and says happiness in the present is too much to comprehend, therefore rather in the future
– ‘too’ – opinion of the author
–> we are moving towards the future to be happy, being happy in the present is too much to handle
‘is’ – being in the present –> ‘I think and therefore I am’ –> the human knows that it exists, the flaw in us is what is making us the most powerful/wonderful thing: we know that we exist
Resistant read:
– Unknown gender of the children –> homosexuality? gender doesn’t discriminate in the experience of time
– Age is using the pronoun ‘he’, the masculine persona has the power through the connection with knowledge and wisdom, if you have had the privilege to be in power once, you can tell the others what to do; they do not experience the struggle of youth anymore
– Connection to the poem (l.12) –> implying that the only way to happiness for women is to be to attached to a man before their age ends (someone else tells them what to do with their time)