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 for ever tarry.
On This Page: Summary · Background · Analysis and Themes · Form and Technique · Notable Lines · Glossary · In Popular Culture · Related Poems
Summary
The poem is a piece of advice to young, unmarried women, urging them not to waste their youth. Gather your rosebuds now, the speaker says, because time is always flying and the flower blooming today will be dead tomorrow. He points to the sun: the higher it climbs, the closer it already is to setting.
Youth, he argues, is the best time of life, and everything after it is a decline. So he ends with a direct instruction: do not be shy or hesitant, make use of your time, and marry while you still can. Lose your prime once, and you may end up waiting alone forever.
Background
Robert Herrick (1591–1674) was an English Cavalier poet and Anglican clergyman, one of the “Sons of Ben” who took Ben Jonson as their model. He published this poem in 1648 as number 208 in Hesperides, the single great collection on which his reputation rests. Its theme is carpe diem, “seize the day,” a tradition reaching back to the Roman poet Horace, and the famous opening echoes an old Latin line, collige, virgo, rosas (“gather, girl, the roses”).
Herrick fell out of fashion after the Restoration and was nearly forgotten for more than a century, until a Victorian revival restored him. Today he is regarded as one of the finest non-dramatic English poets of his age, and this is by far his best-known poem.
Analysis and Themes
For all its fame as a “seize the day” poem, the argument here is more careful, and more conservative, than it first sounds. Herrick builds his case from nature, channels its urgency toward something thoroughly respectable, and then closes on a warning sharper than the cheerful tune lets on.
Rosebuds, the Sun, and the Argument From Nature
The poem persuades through two images. First the rosebud, the classic emblem of youth and beauty, which “smiles today” and will be “dying” tomorrow. Then the sun, the “glorious lamp of heaven,” whose climb toward noon is already a journey toward setting. Both make the same point: decline is not the opposite of bloom but built into it.
By drawing the argument from nature rather than from preaching, Herrick makes it feel like simple observation rather than scolding. The logic is hard to argue with, which is exactly why it works: if the rose and the sun obey this rule, so do you.
Carpe Diem, With a Respectable Twist
This is where the poem surprises readers who expect seduction. The great carpe diem poems of the era, like Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress, push “time is short” toward the bedroom. Herrick, a clergyman, pushes it toward the altar: “use your time, / And while ye may, go marry.” The urgency is real, but the recommended action is marriage, not abandon.
It is worth being honest with a modern reader about whose time is being managed here. The poem is addressed specifically to young women, and it assumes that a woman’s “prime” is a narrow, marriageable window, a frankly seventeenth-century view of value and choice. The charm of the verse should not hide the social pressure inside it.
The Sting in the Last Line
The final stanza turns from observation to command, and the closing couplet carries a quiet threat. “For having lost but once your prime, / You may for ever tarry”: miss the moment a single time and you may wait, unmarried and alone, for good.
That word “for ever” lands hard against the light, lilting music of the verse. The poem’s real art is this gap between manner and message, delivering a memento mori, a reminder of mortality and lost chances, in the sweet, singable tone of a wedding-day blessing.
Form and Technique
The poem is four quatrains rhyming ABAB, with the lines alternating between iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter. That eight-six pattern is common meter, the meter of countless hymns, which is why in Dead Poets Society a student finds the poem in a hymnal. The form is built to be sung, and it gives the verse its brisk, memorable swing.
Herrick sweetens it further with feminine rhymes, the soft two-syllable pairings of “a-flying / dying,” “warmer / former,” and “marry / tarry,” which keep the tone buoyant. The archaic touches, the address to “ye” and the old “a-flying” and “a-getting” forms, lend it the air of a timeless saying. All of that brightness is doing deliberate work: it makes a poem about death and decay go down like a song.
Notable Lines
A few lines carry the poem’s argument and its most quoted phrase.
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Lines 1–2
Old Time is still a-flying;
That age is best which is the first,
Lines 9–10
When youth and blood are warmer;
For having lost but once your prime,
Lines 15–16
You may for ever tarry.
Glossary
A few archaic words and forms, in case they snag a first reading.
- ye (lines 1, 14): an old form of “you,” used here in direct address to the young women.
- a-flying, a-getting (lines 2, 6): the archaic “a-” prefix marks an action in progress; that is, flying along, climbing higher.
- coy (line 13): shy, reluctant, or modestly evasive, especially about courtship. “Be not coy” means do not hold back.
- prime (line 15): the period of greatest vigor and beauty; one’s youthful peak.
- tarry (line 16): to wait, linger, or delay. To “for ever tarry” is to be left waiting indefinitely.
In Popular Culture
Its opening line is one of the most quoted in English poetry.
The 1989 film Dead Poets Society made the poem famous to new generations. In an early scene, Robin Williams’ teacher John Keating has a student read the first stanza aloud, then uses “Gather ye rosebuds” to explain carpe diem and his rallying cry to “seize the day.”
The Pre-Raphaelite painter John William Waterhouse took the line as both subject and title, producing two oil paintings called Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May (1908 and 1909), each showing young women picking roses, a direct visual echo of Herrick’s opening image.
Related Poems
If this poem stayed with you, these make good companions.
- To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell: The era’s other great carpe diem poem, pressing the same “time is short” argument toward seduction rather than the altar.
- To Daffodils by Robert Herrick: Herrick’s gentler companion poem on transience, watching the flowers fade as a mirror of our own brief stay.
- Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare: Another meditation on beauty and time, but one that answers decay with the permanence of verse instead of urgency.