… or not?

English Literature,

CARPE DIEM …
Medieval to 18c
Infinite Poetry Edition
Professor Goodwin
2 May 2024
REVIEW OF METAPHYSICAL
POETS
“The term ‘metaphysical’ was first applied to Donne by Dryden
and later extended to a group of poets by Dr. Johnson. At the
beginning of the 17th century, there appeared a group of poets who
reacted against the conventions of Elizabethan love poetry and
wrote more colloquial, witty, passionately intense, and
psychologically probing poetry. This group came to known as the
metaphysical poets. They include John Donne, Andrew Marvell,
George Herbert, Abraham Cowley, Richard Crashaw, and Henry
Vaughan. They were men of learning, but wrote colloquial and
often metrically irregular lines filled with unusual metaphors,
similes, and conceits.”
 GEORGE HERBERT (1593-
1633)
Herbert was an English religious poet, a major metaphysical poet, notable for
the purity and effectiveness of his choice of words. In 1610 he sent his
mother for New Year’s two sonnets on the theme that the love of God is a
fitter subject for verse than the love of woman. The main resemblance of
Herbert’s poems to Donne’s is in the use of common language in the rhythms
of speech. Some of his poems, such as “The Altar” and “Easter Wings,” are
“pattern” poems, the lines forming the shape of the subject, a practice Joseph
Addison in the 18th century called “false wit.” Samuel Taylor Coleridge in
the 19th century wrote of Herbert’s diction, “Nothing can be more pure,
manly, and unaffected.”(Source: Britannica)
 CARPE DIEM:
SEIZE THE DAY!
"We are food for worms, lads," announces John Keating, the
unorthodox English teacher played by Robin Williams in the 1989
film Dead Poets Society. "Believe it or not," he tells his students,
"each and every one of us in this room is one day going to stop
breathing, turn cold, and die."
The rallying cry of their classroom is carpe diem, popularized as
"seize the day," although more literally translated as "pluck the
day," referring to the gathering of moments like flowers,
suggesting the ephemeral quality of life, as in Robert Herrick's "To
the Virgins, to Make Much of Time," which begs readers to live
life to its full potential, singing of the fleeting nature of life itself:
The Latin phrase carpe diem originated in the "Odes," a long series
of poems composed by the Roman poet Horace in 65 B.C.E., in
which he writes:
While we/ speak, time is envious and
is running away from us.
Seize the day, trusting
little in the future.
 BE DRUNK!
Various permutations of the phrase appear in other ancient works of verse, including the
expression "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die," which is derived from the Biblical
book of Isaiah.
Since Horace, poets have regularly adapted the sentiment of carpe diem as a means to several
ends, most notably for procuring the affections of a beloved by pointing out the fleeting nature
of life, as in Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress":
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapt power.
Other approaches to carpe diem encourage the reader to transcend the mundane, recognize the
power of each moment, however brief, and value possibility for as long as possibility exists.
The French poet Charles Baudelaire offers the advice to "Be Drunk," though not necessarily on
alcohol: "Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.“
 POSSIBILITY AND FUTILITY!
Carpe diem remains an enduring rhetorical device in poetry because it is a sentiment that possesses
an elasticity of meaning, suggesting both possibility and futility. Many poets have responded to the
sentiment, engaging in poetic dialogues and arguments over its meaning and usefulness. Robert
Frost briefly considers the notion of living in the present in a poem appropriately titled "Carpe
Diem." He concludes, however, that "The age-long theme is Age's" and ends the poem with his
own sentiment, that one should seize tomorrow, not today:
But bid life seize the present?
It lives less in present
Than in the future always,
And less in both together
than in the past. The present
Is too much for the senses,
Too crowding, too confusing—
Too present to imagine.
The existential dilemma suggested by carpe diem includes a sense of helplessness and
senselessness, sentiments which are often expressed in a poet's resignation to a life filled with
inexplicable losses and hardships. (SOURCE: poets.org, Academy of American Poets)
ROBERT HERRICK (1591-1674)
Herrick was an English cleric and poet, the most original of the “sons of Ben,” who
revived the spirit of the ancient classic lyric. He is best remembered for the line
“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,” and he is counted among the Cavalier poets, a
group identifiable by its politics—loyal to Charles I during the English Civil Wars. As
a poet, Herrick was steeped in the classical tradition; he was also influenced by
English folklore and lyrics, by the Bible, and by contemporary English writers,
notably Jonson and Robert Burton. (Source: Poetry Foundation)
 ANDREW MARVELL 1621–1678
“The single most compelling embodiment of the change that came over
English society and letters in the course of the 17th century. In a highly
transitional era, Marvell wrote a varied array of exquisite lyrics that
blend Cavalier grace with Metaphysical wit and complexity. He first
turned into a panegyrist for the Lord Protector and his regime and then
into an increasingly bitter satirist and polemicist, attacking the royal
court and the established church in both prose and verse. It is as if the
most delicate and elusive of butterflies somehow metamorphosed into a
caterpillar.” (Source: Poetry Foundation)
MARVELL’S CARPE DIEM
“The masculine assault upon the reluctance of the “coy”
woman lies at the heart of Marvell’s best-known love
poem—perhaps the most famous “persuasion to love” or
carpe diem poem in English—”To his Coy Mistress.”
But: Everything we know about Marvell’s poetry should
warn us to beware of taking its exhortation to carnality at
face value.”
DARK HEART OF MARVELL’S
CARPE DIEM
“It is also likely that most women would be put off rather than tempted by the
charnel-house imagery of the poem’s middle section where the seducer,
sounding like a fire-and-brimstone preacher, warns that “Worms shall try /
That long preserv’d Virginity.” Finally, the depiction of sexual intimacy at the
poem’s close, with its vision of the lovers as “am’rous birds of prey” who will
“tear our Pleasures with rough strife,” is again a disconcerting image in an
ostensible seduction poem. The persona’s desire for the reluctant Lady is
mingled with revulsion at the prospect of mortality and fleshly decay, and he
manifests an ambivalence toward sexual love that is pervasive in Marvell’s
poetry.”
(Source on Marvell: Poetry Foundation.org)
EMI SURVEY: PLEASE FILL
OUT! WITH A SNACK!