Frost's Carpe Diem
An Erroneous Concept
Robert Frost’s speaker in the poem, “Carpe Diem,” disparages the concept of “seize the day.” He finds the present unworthy of seizing. Offering a rare counter to the idea that living for today is the better way, the speaker proposes his unusual take on what seems to be a standard philosophical concept in art and life.
“Age saw two quiet children”
The first ten lines of Frost’s “Carpe Diem” portray a scenario in which a personified “Age” is observing two young lovers, who are traveling somewhere. Age does not know where the couple is going but speculates that they may be going home, or away from “the village,” or they may even be going to church to get married. The church bells are ringing, making the last option quite feasible.
Age does not approach them to speak to them, because “they are strangers,” but after they are out of earshot, he wishes them much happiness in their life, and advises them to “seize the day of pleasure.”
“The age-long theme is Age's”
The speaker then begins his assessment of the command, “carpe diem,” or “seize the day.” He reports that that “age-long theme” comes from those who are up in years: “The age-long theme is Age's.” It is the aged who have “imposed on poems / Their gather-roses burden.” Alluding to Robert Herrick’s “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time,” he demeans the logic of the idea, first by calling it a “burden.”
The command for lovers to “seize the day” implies that those happy lovers, who are, in fact, “overflooded / With happiness,” do not really know that they are happy. The speaker finds such a rationale ridiculous.
“But bid life seize the present?”
Even worse than the silly notion that lovers are not truly cognizant of their happiness is the mistaken idea that they should “seize the present.” According to this speaker, life is lived “less in the present” than in the future, and even less in the present and future combined as in the past.
This speaker is convinced that “The present / Is too much for the senses, / Too crowding, too confusing— / Too present to imagine.” Thus, with such an overbearing presence, the present offers too little room for living. The present is a state to be tolerated until it has become the more manageable past.
At the same time, looking to the future offers more scope for enjoyment than the present, and the speaker believes that this condition has always been the case: “It lives less in the present / Than in the future always.”
Robert Frost
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