Gather ye Rosebuds

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This is a card I made using a transparency of my father and his sister in their youth. The text comes from a poem called, 'To the Virgins to Make Much of Time', - true...

The poem is by Robert Herrick and you can see below that this poem features as the first entry in my oldest 'kept' journal of collections and musings, circa 1969.

The poem encourages youth to enjoy life before it is too late.

The first verse goes:

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may
old time is still a flying
and that same flower that smiles today
tomorrow will be dying.

The poem is particularly poignant in retrospect as the siblings featured in my card, were to lose their older brother not long after this photograph was taken, in his first few weeks of action in the Pacific war.


Robert Herrick, the English poet, lived and wrote between 1591 and 1674. The great Latin poet Horace wrote his ode, from where we get the famous words; carpe diem, eons before Herrick wrote his poem, and about the same time as Horace either Virgil or Ausonius wrote a poem that includes the line that says:

non-collige vigo rosas
gather - girl -the roses

Ecclesiates says in the bible: 'Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy and a merry heart."
Isaiah also said 'Eat and drink for tomorrow we die.'



It is over 65 years since the photo of my father and aunt was taken.
It is over 40 years since I began the journal featuring 'Gather ye Rosebuds while ye may.."
And today, at this stage in the early autumn of my life the carpe diem summons of existential caution has gained even more weight and power.


So my blogging friends:

Carpe diem quam minimum credula postero. Seize the day and place no trust in tomorrow.


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