•Like “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time,” Herrick’s poem “To a Gentlewoman Objecting to His Gray Hairs” (1648) explores the effects of time on physical beauty.
•Herrick’s poem “To Blossoms” (1648) uses symbols found in the natural world to suggest the eventual decay and death of all living things.
•“Upon a Delaying Lady” (1648), another of Herrick’s carpe diem poems, features a speaker urging his lady to “come away” with him before his love turns to “frost or snow.”
•The poem “To His Coy Mistress” (1681) by Andrew Marvell, one of Herrick’s contemporaries, also presents a speaker urging a young woman to adopt the “carpe diem” mentality but in a more metaphysical way than Herrick’s.
•John Donne’s poem “The Flea” (1633) also features a speaker trying to woo a stubborn woman; the poem is remarkable for its humorous and complex metaphysical approach to the problem.
•Christopher Marlowe’s immensely popular “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” (1599) is a poem in which a male speaker tries to entice his love to live with him forever in a pastoral setting. Unlike the speaker of “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time,” however, the shepherd’s reasoning is based on a love of beauty, rather than a fear of time.
•The Irish poet William Butler Yeats’s “The Wild Swans at Coole” (1916) explores the theme of fleeting youth in a melancholy tone.
By grannyjill
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As swift the orb its voyage makes
From east to welcoming west
Thus life will its brief journey take
Twixt birth and eternal rest.
The morrow's but a breath away
Casting shadows on thy face.
Hence must ye fill each enchanted day
Before life moves on apace.
Steal kisses now, beneath the bough
Whilst lips are pure and sweet
Banish sombre furrows from thy brow
And encircling sorrows cheat.
Young men will ne'er a maiden spurn
And may buxom matrons kiss.
Yet this lesson ye must learn
Wrinkled crones he'll surely miss.