When unpacking poetry, readers should make themselves aware of the multiple denotations words may have, especially words that feel very familiar. Robert Herrick’s “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” stands as a perfect example of why this practice is crucial in gaining the entire meaning of a poem. After realizing how the words “rosebuds” and “flower” potentially mean more than just their botanical connotations, the reader discovers a deeper understanding of the poem, noticing a shift in the speaker’s audience, the poem’s tone, and the speaker’s character. Ultimately, the poem reveals itself to have two different messages broadcast to two different audiences despite using the same words.
These two words, “rosebuds” and “flower,” appear in the first stanza, “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, / Old time is still a-flying: / And this same flower that smiles to-day / To-morrow will be dying” (Herrick 1-4), and upon close examination offer clues as to whom the speaker addresses throughout the entire poem. Both of these words have two different denotations that support interpretations of the text, including their basic botanical definition. Yet while rosebuds refer to the closed forms of roses prior to their blossoming, around the mid-1600s (about the time when Herrick was living and writing) the word also referenced young women (“Rosebud, n.”). “Flower” is similar, as it not only means a plant’s blossom, but represented virginity near the 1300s (“Flower, n.”).
Working with the most basic renderings of these two words, the poem, at first, reads rather literally. The speaker encourages their audience to go out and gather rosebuds then follows up with an explanation of how a flower that looks alive and well one day, could very soon be dead the next. From this stanza and the title of the poem, the audience of the speaker is arguably feminine. Not only does the image of men picking flowers seem unusual, but part of the title, “To the Virgins,” strongly suggests an audience of young women due to the connotation of “virgins” more often applying to females than males.
With a feminine audience determined, the overarching metaphor in this interpretation falls neatly into place with “rosebuds” and “flower” symbolizing beauty and its short mortality. After announcing this, the narrator urges young women to capitalize upon their beauty while it still exists by going out and getting married (read: also having sex) in true carpe diem fashion. Finally, the speaker leaves their audience with a little threat, claiming that once this beauty vanishes, no one shall desire the old woman in the same manner that no one wants the dead, decaying flowers from the fourth line. Overall, the tone here is pressing, giving multiple warnings about time and how quickly it comes and goes, but also remains innocent by comparing this embrace of youth to picking flowers.
While the most obvious message of this poem inspires young women to take advantage of their youthful grace and spend it blissfully dallying with men while they still have the chance, there exists another, completely different message that the speaker aims towards men. This additional layer surfaces when the second, less-known denotations of “rosebuds” and “flower” apply themselves to the poem. This new message darkens the whole tone of the poem and reveals the speaker to be more deceptive than they appear.
When using the new context of “rosebuds” as young women, the beginning of the poem morphs from images of women picking flowers into images of men gathering young women. Notice how this causes an audience shift from females to males due to the unlikelihood that women would gather other women like flowers, especially when compared to the alternative. Also note how “virgins” in the title, while generally a term geared towards females, ultimately remains ambiguous, perhaps intentionally.
Already, this new imagery appears more unsettling than just some women simply picking flowers. The first word, “gather,” incites mental pictures of these women being rounded up like cattle, as gathering flowers carries a different connotation than gathering a living creature, or borderline enslavement. The speaker suggests that men may subject women, though this never happens vise versa when speaking to females, as women do not pick flowers that symbolize men, but instead flowers that symbolize beauty (a possible way of making them more attractive for men.) In a way, the speaker plays a sinister game with his audience, convincing naive young women to embrace their youth and beauty to its fullest under the blanket fears of time and consequently old age coupled with undesirability. Meanwhile, in the same lines, a presumably defined male speaker turns to the men and says “I coaxed out the women, now gather them up while you can.” Men gather women like items, while women prepare themselves to be gathered all under the speaker’s influence. In defense of the speaker, though, perhaps “gather” should be read as “courted.” In this case, the mood of the poem lightens, despite the speaker still playing the role of “matchmaker.”
Unfortunately, any chance of this lighthearted mood falls apart once “flower” redefines itself as “virginity.” In one reading, women may grow old and become undesirable because their beauty fades like a flower dies, but once again the mood shifts as the audience shifts and in this new interpretation, the speaker references women’s virginity. Here, men should gather young women while time permits, but must also pay attention to how a woman’s virginity vanishes quickly in the same manner a flower lives one day then dies the next. The speaker convinces the men of the audience that they race against not only time, but each other, as well, for a woman’s purity becomes defiled after sex with just one man.
Works Cited
“Flower, n.” OED Online. December 2011. Oxford University Press. 20 February 2012
<http://oed.com/view/Entry/72003?rskey=8dSJhX&result=2&isAdvanced=false>.
Herrick, Robert. “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time.” Approaching Literature. Ed. Peter
Shackel and Ed. Jack Ridl. 3rd. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2012. 819. Print.
“Rosebud, n.” OED Online. December 2011. Oxford University Press. 20 February 2012
<http://oed.com/view/Entry/167523?redirectedFrom=rosebud>.
