Carpe Diem

O mistress mine, where are you roaming?

O stay and hear! your true-love’s coming

That can sing both high and low;

Trip no further, pretty sweeting,

Journey’s end in lovers’ meeting–

Every wise man’s son doth know.

What is love? ’tis not hereafter;

Present mirth hath present laughter;

What’s to come is still unsure:

In delay there lies no plenty,–

Then come kiss me, Sweet and twenty,

Youth’s a stuff will not endure.


Response: The title Carpe Diem has two known meanings, “Seize the day” and “to pick, to pluck, to pick up, or to gather”; nobody can be sure which meaning Shakespeare intended to use, but for the sake of argument lets say he meant “Seize the Day”. The author’s argument for his “young” lover is to live in the moment, because the future is never certain. It isn’t all as pure and romantic as the poem seems to be, it takes a second look – like everything Shakespeare writes – to understand what he really said. “In delay there lies no plenty,–” at first you think that he is simply stating that you should “Seize the Day” but actually he is coaxing his lover to stop waiting and give herself to him. His writing is well known for romance, but is it really romantic? By studying the sound of the poem we notice something; the poem is well structured, the rhyme flows, and the meter is constant but that conflicts with the honestly perverted message. I cannot say for sure what he meant, but this is clear to me: if we look at his use of figurative language and double-meanings this poem was made to lure an innocent woman into his arms.