Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May
A reminder from illness and life to seize the day
In the movie Dead Poets Society, Robin Williams’ character, Mr. Keating, a professor at an elite boarding school for boys, asks a student to open his hymnal to page 542 and read the poem’s first stanza. Mr. Pitts flips through his book until he finds the poem and pauses before reading its title, “To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time.” His tone is more question than declaration.
“Yes, come on,” Mr. Keating says. “Rather appropriate, isn’t it?”
Teenage boys snicker as Mr. Pitts begins to read:
“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.”
The Latin term for the first line, Mr. Keating tells his students, is carpe diem.
Seize the day.
For these young boys, it is a lesson in mortality, a reminder that one day they will be as their predecessors: “Fertilizing daffodils,” Mr. Keating says.
Dead Poets Society is one of my favorites, heartbreaking and inspirational at the same time. How could I not love a…
