![]() ![]() The poem " The Layers" by Stanley Kunitz offers advice through the poet's first hand experience: Not all carpe diem poems instruct, however. In " A Song On the End of the World," the poet Czeslaw Milosz asserts that the world has not yet ended, though "No one believes it is happening now," while Rainer Maria Rilke's poem " Archaic Torso of Apollo" famously ends with the directive "You must change your life." Emily Dickinson's poem " I tie my Hat-I crease my Shawl (443)" boasts that the reward of life is to "hold our Senses," and the French poet Charles Baudelaire offers the advice to " Be Drunk," though not necessarily on alcohol: "Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. Other approaches to carpe diem encourage the reader to transcend the mundane, recognize the power of each moment, however brief, and value possibility for as long as possibility exists. Since Horace, poets have regularly adapted the sentiment of carpe diem as a means to several ends, most notably for procuring the affections of a beloved by pointing out the fleeting nature of life, as in Andrew Marvell's " To His Coy Mistress": At the close of "De rosis nascentibus," a poem attributed to both Ausonius and Virgil, the phrase "collige, virgo, rosas" appears, meaning "gather, girl, the roses." The expression urges the young woman to enjoy life and the freedom of youth before it passes. Various permutations of the phrase appear in other ancient works of verse, including the expression "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die," which is derived from the Biblical book of Isaiah. The Latin phrase carpe diem originated in the "Odes," a long series of poems composed by the Roman poet Horace in 65 B.C.E., in which he writes: The rallying cry of their classroom is carpe diem, popularized as "seize the day," although more literally translated as "pluck the day," referring to the gathering of moments like flowers, suggesting the ephemeral quality of life, as in Robert Herrick's " To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time," which begs readers to live life to its full potential, singing of the fleeting nature of life itself: "Believe it or not," he tells his students, "each and every one of us in this room is one day going to stop breathing, turn cold, and die." My phone calls home last year were a lot different than they are now."We are food for worms, lads," announces John Keating, the unorthodox English teacher played by Robin Williams in the 1989 film Dead Poets Society. Something I noticed is that my parents were much more eager to give me money during my freshman year than they are my sophomore year. Everyone knows the struggle and no one will judge you for eating Ramen for every meal for a week straight. The four years you spend as an undergraduate student is probably the only time in your life it will be socially acceptable to be dirt poor.
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