Fair Daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon;
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attain’d his noon.
Stay, stay,
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the even-song;
And, having pray’d together, we
Will go with you along.
We have short time to stay, as you,
We have as short a spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay,
As you, or anything.
We die
As your hours do, and dry
Away,
Like to the summer’s rain;
Or as the pearls of morning’s dew,
Ne’er to be found again.
- Robert Herrick
A constant theme of the songs written by Robert Herrick is the short-lived nature of life, the fleeting passage of time. We find a note of melancholy/sadness in his poem which arises out of the realization that beauty is not going to stay forever.
In his poem ‘To Daffodils’, the poet Robert Herrick begins by saying that we grieve to see the beautiful daffodils being wasted away very quickly. The duration of their gloom is so short that it seems even the rising sun still hasn’t reached the noon-time. Thus, in the very beginning the poet has struck a note of mourning at the fast dying of daffodils.
The poet then addresses the daffodils and asks them to stay until the clay ends with the evening prayer. After praying together he says that they will also accompany the daffodils. This is so because like flowers men too have a very transient life and even the youth is also very short-lived.
“We have short time to stay, as you,
We have as short a spring.”
The poet symbolically refers to the youth as spring in these lines. He equates/compares human life with the life of daffodils. Further he says that both of them grow very fast to be destroyed later. Just like the short duration of the flowers, men too die away soon. Their life is as short as the rain of the summer season, which comes for a very short time; and the dew-drops in the morning, which vanish away and never return again. Thus, the poet after comparing the flowers to humans, later turns to the objects of nature – he has compared the life of daffodils with summer rain, dew drops.
The central idea presented by the poet in this poem is that like the flowers we humans have a very short life in this world. The poet laments that we too life all other beautiful things soon slip into the shadow and silence of grave. A sad and thoughtful mood surrounds the poem
Yesterday, walking home I passed by the first stand of blooming daffodils of the season, and it brought my mind back to this poem by Robert Herrick, last read more than thirty years ago in college days. Herrick, the man who wrote that ridiculous “gather ye rosebuds while ye may” poem, was a divine with an effusive and suspiciously secular personality, to judge from his poems, in any event. He was not quite a cavalier poet, of course, but he was also something of an adventurer (as chaplain to the duke of Buckingham, he participated in the military disaster at the île de Rhé, when Buckingham’s efforts to relieve the siege of the Calvinist city of La Rochelle collapsed). Daffodils can seem a bit trite as a metaphor, I suppose, but of course to the seventeenth century aesthetic, those daffodils were a perfect image. The beauty of nature, its spontaneity, and also the transitory nature of life, especially of human life. There is a carpe diem sense behind this work, and Herrick carries it out beautifully. Scan this poem and look at how it brims with monosyllabic words in alliterative sequence (die, do, dry, for instance). It’s an impressive work of studied, very carefully studied, simplicity, where the word choice and form closely match images and thoughts. And across the sea in Holland, Ambrosius Bosschaert (the Younger) is painting much the same concepts, with oil on canvas, picking a bouquet that speaks more of the end of May (for my garden in any event), roses, iris, convalaria, fritullaria. But for a Hollander of that age, the message was the same: enjoy the splendor that nature offers, but don’t forget the fleeting nature of this beauty, the fact that it will pass, decay, fade, very quickly. The world is warming to the green fuse, and the thought of transitition couldn’t be more timely. …………
thaaaaanks fofo…u really helped me
thank u this is great analysis
to put it in a nutshell he says
“CARPEDIEM OR SEIZE THE DAT”
thank you very much
thanx alot
thanks alot
good
English Class BLOWS
Yo’
Literature is boring at times.
Thanks for the help.
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The poet symbolically refers to the youth as spring in these lines.I feel that the real objecive of this poem was not to insight an idea of youthful death. This is because the average daffodil life can be seen to be longer than a human life. If you refering to their flowering pattern then it can be seen that the Average flowering span of a daffodil can range from 6 weeks to 6 months. After blooming the daffodil plant rebuilds its bulb. This is something very complexed and would take much concentration to do, something that a young person would find difficulty in exercising.
From this i think its clear to say that the death of the daffodil does not represent a true loss in adolescent life. I feel that the poem is trying to exert a pure sorrow of death as opposed to the loss of young life. I feel that it is trying to challenge the real roots of human life. To explore the extent to which we take our lives with as much importance as others. The daffodil is a plant that germinates its seeds in order to create bulbs for new life. If we look at how we help to produce new life we can only see that our own ways of producing life only seeks to benefit us.
The poems of Robert Herrick contain such freshness livelyness which can be feel whenever someone read it. And the musucality and rythm please yous ears with melody. His another unique quality is his poems are often addressed to someone or something as To Daffodils or To anthea etc.
The way the author describes the daffodils are all adjectives of happiness. The man also realizes while watching the daffodils that the only real happiness that you can get, comes from the natural world and cannot be achieved by wealth. The Man finds happiness at home alone when he is dreaming because dreaming is the greatest happiness in being alone. This happines fills the void in the man’s heart, and he is as happy as the daffodils.
Written by : Alaa Cali4nia Boy
very good explanations
Herrick’s “to daffodils” is a revival of the genre carpe diem. This genre’s message is that life is short, and world is beautiful, love is splendid and we must use the short time we live to make the most of it. This is shown in the words “haste”, “run”, “short” and “quick
Anonymous said…
Thanks 4 all of u three 4 ur such nice comments. It help us to understsnd the theme easily. Although God has given us a very short span of life, but he has also given us a lot of beautiful things to enjoy but human never satisfy on what he has…..
its really awsome