By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Carpe diem: seize the day. The Roman poet Horace said it first and said it best, as with so many things. Yet many English poets have put their distinctive stamp on the carpe diem motif, exhorting us to seize the day, to make the most of life, to ‘gather ye rosebuds while ye may’, in Robert Herrick’s well-known phrase, or to ‘Stop and consider! Life is but a day’, as Keats has it in ‘Sleep and Poetry’.
Below we’ve gathered together ten of our favourite ‘carpe diem’ poems in English, all of which warn us about the brevity of life and encourage us to get on with it while we still can.