English literature the book is designed to acquaint students with the main outlines

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old time is still a-tlying;

And this same flower that smiles today, Tomorrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun, The higher he’s a-getting,

The sooner will his race be run, And nearer he’s to setting.

Then be not coy, but use your time, And, while ye may, go marry;

For, having lost but once your prime, You may forever tarry.

John Milton, a Puritan, the 17lhcentury poet, also wrote on the carpe diem theme, but he followed another approach. In the sonnet “On His Having Arrived at the Age of Twenty Three” he frets over not having accomplished anything important by that point in his life, but he ends by placing his faith in heaven.

The concern with time that is major aspect of the carpe diem theme continues to appear in literature through the years up to the present.

Ben Jonson (1572 - 1637)

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Ben Jonson was reared to the bricklayer’s trade and had no benefit of a formal university education. But, by force of will,

became a great scholar of the classics and consequently affected English literature for nearly two hundred years.

Jonson’s major contribution to poetry was to adapt the poetic forms that had been used by the classic writers of ancient Rome. Jonson was influenced by poets who had composed centuries before in Latin. He introduced to English specific and strong language, great order and balance. He is considered the forerunner of English neoclassicism.

Ben Jonson is the author of the best English satirical comedies. Among his best works are: “Volpone, or the Fox”(1606), “The Silent Woman”, “The Alchemist”( 1610), “Bartholomew Fair”. His hostility to tyrants was expressed in his tragedies “Sejanus His Fall” (Sejunus’s Fall), and “Catiline His Conspiracy” (Catiline’s Conpiracy).

Ben Jonson was also a fine lyric poet. His miner poems and the songs in many of his plays are true masterpieces. But it was in the genre of satirical comedies that Ben Jonson became leader and excelled all other dramatists. Jonson’s comic manner of depicting characters typical of contemporary life influenced the whole English literature. He was friendly with Shakespeare. King James made him poet laureate. A numbe r of young poets of his time, including Herrick and Lovelace respecting Jonson’s talents, called themselves the “Sons of Ben” . Among his followers we may list the novelists of the enlightenment and such writers of later periods as Charles Dickens, Bernard Shaw and John Boynton Priestly.