This week I’m having a hard time coming up with a really
good topic for my AP lit blog, on account of that this week we focused on
finding poems for our poetry notebooks and looking at the interworking of Shakespeare’s
language. So, this week I think I am going to practice analyzing some poetry,
just for funJ.
Just fit the theme of this past week I am going combine my poetry skills and my
Shakespeare skills, and analyze a poem written by Shakespeare. I am going to
look at “Carpe Diem,” which is little ironic because in Latin the title means Seize
the Day, and I am seizing the practice at analyzing poetry.
One of the most important parts of this poem is the title. “Carpe
Diem” is a phrase from a Latin poem, “Carpe diem quam minimum credula postero” which
means seize the Day, putting
as little trust as possible in the next day. The whole phrase means that the
future is unforeseen. The entire poem is about the urgency of life and how one
should live life now and enjoy the present before the journey over. Shakespeare’s
cynical and pessimistic tone toward to the uncertainty of life reveals that
love and youth can be taken away rapidly so one must act upon them urgently. In The first stanza focuses on the lover’s
quest to find each other but once they find their love the journey is over. In
the first stanza the speaker is professing his love and asking his lover to
respond to him now and not later. (Wink Wink this philosophy and naivety can be
seen in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet; when Romeo and Juliet chose to
get married after being with each other for a day, and A Midsummer’s Night
Dream.) One of the key lines in this poem is “present mirth hath present
laughter” meaning if you think something is funny now laugh now not later. This
applies to the whole philosophy of “Carpe Diem” Shakespeare puts it right when
his speaker asks “What is love? ‘tis not hereafter. As time passes love can be
lost and forgotten but the present is where one can have the most feeling
toward love. Shakespeare is saying because the future is unpredictable why
chance the love and youth they have right now by waiting to see what happens in
the future. It is the ultimate definition of “living in the present.”
So the ultimate
question that a scholarly poet analyzer must find out is what is the moment in
time the Shakespeare is trying to capture? The answer to that question is quite
complex; it is not just one moment that he is trying to capture it the entire
present time that is trying to get the reader to be aware of. This poem is
trying to show the reader the importance of living in the moment and focusing
on “the now” because by waiting for the future the present is missed and the
chance at youth and love is missed.
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.
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.
William Shakespeare
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