Carpe Diem in Poetry - Essay Example

Each path will take him to a very different destination, but from where he is standing at this point he doesn’t know the end result. He is pondering which road is his choice. Should he take the road most travelers take; or should he take the road a little different. He probably anticipates what his future holds, but will always wonder where the other road can carry him. However, if he takes the road expected of him and it doesn’t work out, “Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back;” he doubts if he will have the opportunity to make another choice.

But yet in the last stanza he made his decision; he took the road that not many take, and apparently it worked out well. As time has moved on, he was not given a chance for another choice. However, he is happy with the outcome of his chosen path. Considering the line, “I shall be telling this with a sigh,” what does this mean? When the future comes, and I look back on my life and what could have been, did I make the right decision? How could my life have been different if I had taken another path?

The fact remains you have to make a decision and no one knows what the outcome. When you come to the end of your life you realize that you don’t know what the right choice is until it’s all over. . Looking at “To his Coy Mistress,” Andrew Marvell is truly taken by the beauty of this woman. “My vegetable love should grow,” he is comparing his love to how you grow to love vegetables. It’s a feeling that sustains the body, mind and soul. He adores this woman and wants to be with her, and he is telling her that he wants to show his heart.

He, however, wants to make sure that everything is perfect for them. In the second paragraph, the mood changes a little and he is feeling that time is nearing and he wants to move things along a little quicker. He is afraid that if he waits too long he will not have the chance to be with her and show his love. In the third and final paragraph, he turns back to his feelings for the woman and how deeply he feels. “Our sweetness, up into one ball; And tear our pleasures with rough strife,” he wants to be with her in whatever life throws at them.

In this paragraph Marvell shows “carpe diem,” to seize the moment. He is saying that no one knows what life will bring, but that we can seize the present moment and make our own life together. We can grab the fire of life and move forward together. In Robert Herrick’s “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time,” he puts it in a very simple form. “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,” means to take advantage of youth while you have the chance, don’t wait until you are old and to much time has passed.

The rose symbolizes life, and the bud virgins, the cycles of nature that represent the cycles of life. Just as life changes through cycles, youth, adulthood, marriage, children, and death; so does a rose. A rose sprouts buds and produces a flower, and eventually withers and loses it petals. He also states that with youth the, “blood