Poem Post #3: Responding to: Robert Herrick, “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time”

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.

       This particular poem is, funnily enough, extremely reminiscent of "To His Coy Mistress" by Andrew Marvell, which we analyzed in class not too long ago. If this was Perrine's style of literary fiction, he would refer to it as the commercial kind. Similarly to Marvell's poem, the sole purpose of this text falls on entertaining and bringing a smile to the audience Herrick may be addressing. Actually, thinking about it, Herrick may have not meant for this to be funny at all, and perhaps he is just trying to get laid. I've made this remark because of the time period in which this was written. 1591-1674, which is the age in which Herrick lived, reveals that he was unaware that his writing, read in today's times, is offensive and kind of hurtful for women, since it lacks the sensitivity towards the awareness of women's problems. The reason why we can find a comedic light in this piece of writing is because the interpretive audience has increased from just women, to everyone with a fair understanding of the process of life. With that being said, the once insensitive and pretentious message that this poem possessed, has transformed into a comedic message fueled by ignorance backed up by a time gap. Elementally, this poem is funny because it seems like a sex-ridden individual is attempting to use fine speech and poor rhetoric to convince women to sleep with him. The poor rhetoric part comes not from the argument of time, which would make it a good argument since there is no counter to time, but because he never expresses that he doesn't want the women to just have sex, but to have sex with him, which is the perceived overall intention of the poem.

How pathetic will our writing and rhetoric mechanisms look to individuals 100 years from now?