More Subjects
Name of Student
Name of Professor
Name of Class
Day Month Year
Personal Analysis Essay
Virginity of a woman has been a rhetorical, hot, and interesting topic which grabbed quite an attention in poetry and literature. The element of time always circles around this particular topic. Poets or authors usually find it compelling to thread time with virginity. I have chosen Robert Herrick’s “To the Virgins to Make Much of Time” for this paper. In this poem, the poet is inspiring virgin women to lose their virginity and enjoy the fruits of sexually active life. The poem can be summed up by “carpe diem,” a Latin phrase that means “seize the day.” It preaches virgins that pleasure and youth of woman rust with time. Although virgins have this blooming flower at the moment, sooner they will be old and they will not get to experience their wildest, warm and full of pleasure moments that they deserved to enjoy in their life so they need to take advantage from the time that they have.
The poet is quick in directing readers to the main focus of the poem. He takes starts from, “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.” Here he is encouraging the virgins “ye” to gather their fruits of sexual pleasures “rosebuds” while they still can “while ye may.” He is telling virgins that there is whole another heavenly and pleasure oozing life waiting for them. They can embrace it and take advantage of the time that they presently have in their lives. He discusses this further as “Old time is still a flying;” here he has added “old” with time as an element of sadness which provokes the idea of getting old inside his readers’ mind. In the next line, “And this same flower that smiles today”, he is referring to sexually turned-on youth which is on its splendor as a person gets higher and higher on the ecstasy of youth. But this does not last and after reaching its peak it starts dropping down ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"lLjLO8FK","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(aapone)","plainCitation":"(aapone)"},"citationItems":[{"id":652,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/2RJg7y7G/items/INLFMAUK"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/2RJg7y7G/items/INLFMAUK"],"itemData":{"id":652,"type":"webpage","title":"To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time by Robert Herrick - Poems | Academy of American Poets","container-title":"To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time","genre":"Text","abstract":"Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,","URL":"https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/virgins-make-much-time","language":"en","author":[{"family":"aapone","given":""}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2000",11,21]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (aapone). As a person grows older, he gets less passionate about sex. The poet wants the virgins to acknowledge that after some years their body will not only get weak physically and mentally but emotionally and sexually as well. They will not be able to enjoy the heavenly pleasures of sex if they chose to stay virgin as they grow older. Moreover, flowers do not smile in reality so the phrase used by the poet means "bloom." He is using the metaphor of the smiling flower to indicate the active and intense orgasms one feels while that individual is young. By the death of the flower, the poet is indicating that the person will stop experiencing orgasms if the age exceeds.
The poet continues motivating virgins by using another example of the time which is passing by. He tells that a person needs to acknowledge that with the growing age a person gets old, that individual does not take a reverse back to being young or finds a fountain of youth to stay young forever. For this, he has used the example of the sun. The sun mounts on the sky with all its glory and after reaching its peak it takes a voyage of going down to set and disappear. He has called sun as a “glorious lamp of heaven” and referred it to the energetic, intense, electrifying and sparky youth of a person which does not stay forever. He used “sooner” to add the element of urgency in the next lines. The setting of the sun inserts sadness in this poem. It means that a person has lost the chances of enjoying exciting and pleasurable moments.
Furthermore, in next stanza the poet continues telling the importance of losing virginity early while a person is young “That age is best which is the first,” He tells his readers that the best time of losing virginity is when one enters in the young age, throughout one’s youth, one should spend life while enjoying the pleasures of sex because it is the best age for a person to take such decision. By “When youth and blood are warmer;” the poet is indicating that the physical body, hormones, and the blood of a young person can do justice in sexual activities. In addition, by “But being spent, the worse, and worst” the poet is referring to the old age again. He is referring that part of the age as the worst time in which a person is unable to enjoy orgasms, feel pleasures and give back such things as well. By “Times still succeed the former” poet addresses that time will not stop and it will keep passing by, emotions and health of a person do not allow to continue such activities and feel things like they do in young age.
In the end, the poet proposes a way to that which is to get married. As the poet belongs to old times, in those times people used to lose their virginity only once they were married to their spouse in a holy ceremony. Moreover, he also adds the significance of doing that in young age because if a person does not get married at a young age, that individual cannot enjoy the pleasures as one should. The poet tells it is of no use if you choose to get married in old age, one should better leave doing that “You may forever tarry”.
Throughout the poem, the poet is convincing virgins to open the door of heaven full of sexual pleasures. He is preaching by alarming virgins that time is passing by, one must “seize the day” when one has a chance and taste the ultimate fruits of sexual activities. His tone has urgency and tension in it, he wants to convey virgins that once a person’s age starts rusting, health, emotions, and mentality start rusting as well. One should take a decision as early as possible to get involved in sexual activities in life because that individual deserves it.
Work Cited
ADDIN ZOTERO_BIBL {"custom":[]} CSL_BIBLIOGRAPHY aapone. “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time by Robert Herrick - Poems | Academy of American Poets.” To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time, 21 Nov. 2000, https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/virgins-make-much-time.
More Subjects
Join our mailing list
© All Rights Reserved 2024