The Full Text of “Go, Lovely Rose”
1Go, lovely rose!
2Tell her that wastes her time and me,
3That now she knows,
4When I resemble her to thee,
5How sweet and fair she seems to be.
6Tell her that’s young,
7And shuns to have her graces spied,
8That hadst thou sprung
9In deserts, where no men abide,
10Thou must have uncommended died.
11Small is the worth
12Of beauty from the light retired;
13Bid her come forth,
14Suffer herself to be desired,
15And not blush so to be admired.
16Then die! that she
17The common fate of all things rare
18May read in thee;
19How small a part of time they share
20That are so wondrous sweet and fair!
The Full Text of “Go, Lovely Rose”
1Go, lovely rose!
2Tell her that wastes her time and me,
3That now she knows,
4When I resemble her to thee,
5How sweet and fair she seems to be.
6Tell her that’s young,
7And shuns to have her graces spied,
8That hadst thou sprung
9In deserts, where no men abide,
10Thou must have uncommended died.
11Small is the worth
12Of beauty from the light retired;
13Bid her come forth,
14Suffer herself to be desired,
15And not blush so to be admired.
16Then die! that she
17The common fate of all things rare
18May read in thee;
19How small a part of time they share
20That are so wondrous sweet and fair!
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“Go, Lovely Rose” Introduction
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"Go, Lovely Rose" was written by the 17th-century English poet Edmund Waller. A carpe diem poem, it reflects on the transience of youth and beauty. In particular, its speaker suggests that an evasive lady should probably share her youth and beauty with a lover before it's too late! The speaker conveys that message to his beloved in the form of a symbolic rose. Just like the lady, the speaker says, this rose is beautiful; just like the lady, its beauty can't bring anyone any pleasure if it hides away; and just like the lady, it will wither and die all too soon. This poem first appeared under the title "Song" in Waller's 1645 collection Poems, and it has often been set to music.
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“Go, Lovely Rose” Summary
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Go, beautiful rose! Tell the lady who's wasting her time (and mine) that, when I compare her to you, she looks just as lovely as you are.
Tell this young woman, who refuses to let anyone gaze at her beauty, that if you had grown in a wasteland where nobody lives, you'd have died unappreciated.
Beauty that's hidden away from the light isn't worth much. So tell that lady to come out, tolerate being desired, and not act so embarrassed when I admire her.
Then die! Your death will teach her the shared fate of all beautiful things. Lovely women and lovely flowers alike flourish for so short a time!
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“Go, Lovely Rose” Themes
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Making the Most of Youth and Beauty
“Go, Lovely Rose” is a classic carpe diem poem: a poem in which a male lover cajoles his elusive lady-love into returning his affections, often with warnings that her youth and beauty won’t last forever and she’d better make the most of them now. In this poem, the speaker makes his point through a personified rose. He nominates this flower to be his messenger, telling it to deliver words of flattery and warning to the woman he’s got his eye on. This rose—as fragile as it’s “lovely”—stands as a reminder that beauty is fleeting and must be enjoyed while it lasts.
The speaker’s beloved “wastes her time and me,” the speaker complains: she’s hiding her loveliness away from the world (and from him in particular), and in doing so she’s squandering the best days of her youth and the speaker’s youth alike. It’s for this reason that he elects to send her a rose as his messenger. A rose can communicate everything he wants her to understand by working as a perfect symbol of the lady. Like the lady, the rose is “sweet and fair”—and like the lady, the rose wouldn’t bring anyone any pleasure if it grew in “deserts, where no men abide.” There’s no point being beautiful, the speaker suggests, if one's beauty goes “uncommended,” unappreciated and unseen.
But the most ominous way in which this rose is like the lady is in its mortality. Its final role as a messenger, the speaker says, will be to “die,” and thus to show the lady a great and terrible truth: it’s the “common fate of all things rare” (the shared destiny of all lovely things) to wither away in time. The poem thus comes across as a warning against waste as much as a celebration of a lady’s beauty. The speaker's messenger rose serves as a reminder that loveliness—and young love—might be fleeting as a summer flower.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Go, Lovely Rose”
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Lines 1-5
Go, lovely rose!
Tell her that wastes her time and me,
That now she knows,
When I resemble her to thee,
How sweet and fair she seems to be.The poem begins with a command from a man to a flower. The speaker makes an apostrophe to a personified “lovely rose,” treating the flower as his messenger and instructing it to carry his words to his lady love.
Some of those words feel conventionally flattering, exactly the sort of thing one would say to someone they were sending a rose to. The rose must tell the lady, for instance, that when the speaker “resemble[s] her” (or compares her) to the rose itself, she seems just as “sweet and fair." She’s a veritable blossom.
But this rose isn’t just supposed to carry a compliment to the speaker’s beloved; it’s also meant to work as a persuader. For, as the speaker complains, this lady “wastes her time and me.” In other words, this lady is holding back, being coy, not simply rushing into the speaker’s open arms. And the speaker is fed up with it. His zeugma on “wastes her time and me” carries a note of threat: in wasting “her time,” the lady might also be wasting her chance with “me,” with this rose-sending lover.
This, then, will be a carpe diem (or “seize the day”) poem, a poem in which a frustrated lover tries to talk his beloved into returning his affections. (This genre was all the rage in 17th-century England, the time and place when Waller was writing.) Roses often featured in carpe diem poetry, working as symbols of both love and transience. For roses are as fragile as they’re lovely—and the point of a carpe diem poem is that lovely ladies should seize the day, enjoying youth and love while they can, before (like roses) they wither.
In telling this personified rose his message for his lady, this speaker is also speaking directly to his lady. As his inclination to “resemble her” to the rose implies, he sees her as rose-like in precisely that carpe-diem sort of way: young, beautiful, and unlikely to remain so forever. And while his first words to her are complimentary, there’s also a hint of danger in them. After all, he doesn’t say that she is as “sweet and fair” as a rose, but that she “seems to be” so. Perhaps she’ll start looking a whole lot less sweet if she keeps on “wast[ing] her time” by dodging the speaker.
This energetic poem will convey its message of mingled flattery and warning in four quintains (five-line stanzas). The varied meter here swings between iambic dimeter (lines of two iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm, as in “That hadst | thou sprung”) and iambic tetrameter (lines of four iambs, as in “In des- | erts, where | no men | abide”), giving the poem jaunty energy. Often, the speaker heightens that energy even more through little changes in the meter. Take the rhythm of the poem’s very first line:
Go, love- | ly rose!
The first foot there is a spondee—a powerful DUM-DUM. The punch of that first “Go” starts the poem with a bang, helping to capture the speaker’s frustration and longing.
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Lines 6-10
Tell her that’s young,
And shuns to have her graces spied,
That hadst thou sprung
In deserts, where no men abide,
Thou must have uncommended died. -
Lines 11-15
Small is the worth
Of beauty from the light retired;
Bid her come forth,
Suffer herself to be desired,
And not blush so to be admired. -
Lines 16-20
Then die! that she
The common fate of all things rare
May read in thee;
How small a part of time they share
That are so wondrous sweet and fair!
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“Go, Lovely Rose” Symbols
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The Rose
The “lovely rose” the speaker sends as a messenger to his lady is an obvious symbol of the lady herself (and, by extension, of all lovely young people). The speaker makes this point clearly and from the start: “when I resemble [my lady] to thee,” the speaker tells the rose, she looks just as “sweet and fair” as it does.
But if this lady is a lovely rose, she’s also subject to the fate of all roses: an all-too-fast withering-away and death. The rose becomes her symbol because it’s beautiful and fresh, yes, but also because roses bloom and fade over the course of mere days. Women’s youth and beauty, the speaker implies, enjoys just as “small a part of time” as a blossom.
This speaker is far from the only pining lover to make this point using a symbolic rose. Speakers in Shakespeare and Herrick, to name just two poets out of many, likewise simultaneously compliment and threaten ladies with visions of fading flowers.
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“Go, Lovely Rose” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Apostrophe
This poem is framed as an apostrophe to a “lovely rose”—a flower that the speaker is sending to a lady as a simultaneous compliment and warning. The speaker personifies this rose and treats it as a messenger, telling it the idea he wants it to pass along to his lady: that she’s as “sweet and fair” as it is, but as fragile and mortal as it is, too. The rose must tell the lady, in short, that she’s just like a rose in every way: she’s a gorgeous but temporary blossom who will die “uncommended,” unadmired, if she insists on hiding away where “no men abide.”
The speaker’s apostrophe to the rose thus makes the flower a proxy for the lady. Everything the speaker tells the rose to pass along—that beauty does no good if it’s hidden “from the light,” that “all things rare” (all wonderful, beautiful things) share the “common fate” of death and must thus enjoy their time in the sun while they can—is applicable to blossom and woman alike.
The apostrophe also creates a certain tone of complicity between the speaker and the rose. The rose is the speaker’s co-conspirator here, his partner in persuasion.
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Repetition
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Enjambment
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Assonance
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"Go, Lovely Rose" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Resemble
- Thee, thou
- Shuns to have her graces spied
- Hadst
- Deserts, where no men abide
- Uncommended
- Retired
- Bid
- Suffer
- Common
- Rare
- Wondrous
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Compare.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Go, Lovely Rose”
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Form
“Go, Lovely Rose” is what’s known as a carpe diem poem. That Latin term, which translates to “seize the day,” is used to describe poems in which a lover (almost invariably male) pleads with a beloved (almost invariably female) to get the most out of youth and beauty while the getting’s good—by which he means that his lady should respond to his romantic advances.
The tone of these poems often falls somewhere between longing, impatient, and threatening. This poem (a famous example of the genre) is no different: the speaker warns his beloved that she’s wasting both “her time and me,” and that her attractions won’t last any longer than a rose’s ephemeral petals.
Waller conveys his version of this message over the course of four quintains (five-line stanzas) written in a mixture of short iambic dimeter lines (lines of two iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm, as in “May read | in thee”) and longer iambic tetrameter lines (four iambs, as in “Tell her | that wastes | her time | and me”). The varied meter of these stanzas make the poem feel fittingly frustrated: rather than cruising along evenly, the rhythm lurches and pulls like a dog on a short leash.
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Meter
"Go, Lovely Rose" alternates between lines of iambic dimeter and iambic tetrameter. That means that its shorter lines use two iambs (metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm), as in "May read | in thee," while its longer lines use four, as in "When I | resem- | ble her | to thee." The shorter dimeter lines fall on the A rhymes in the poem's ABABB rhyme scheme, and the longer tetrameter lines fall on the B rhymes.
The difference in line lengths here keeps this poem from simply flowing along like a calm stream. There's an abrupt lurch built right into the rhythm, giving the speaker's voice an impatient quality that matches his impatience with his elusive beloved.
Variations in the meter add to that effect. In line 1, for instance, the poem kicks off with a powerful spondee (a metrical foot with a DUM-DUM rhythm):
Go, love- | ly rose!
The intense stress on "Go" launches the poem with vigor (and perhaps irritation).
Several other lines start with a trochee (the opposite foot to an iamb, with a DUM-da rhythm): line 11 ("Small is | the worth"), line 13 ("Bid her | come forth"), and line 14 ("Suffer | herself | to be | desired") all seem to strain forward eagerly with those up-front stresses leading the way. (The first words of lines 2 and 6—"Tell her"—might also be read as trochees, though it's possible to read them as exasperated iambs, too: "Tell her | that's young" puts more stress on telling that specific "her.")
The cumulative effect here is to make the speaker sound equal parts vigorous and frustrated. This isn't a gentle, mellifluous love poem; it's something livelier.
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Rhyme Scheme
The rhyme scheme of "Go, Lovely Rose" runs as follows, with new rhyme sounds introduced in each stanza:
ABABB
The five-line stanza was a popular form around Waller’s time, and other 17th-century poets like John Donne and George Herbert used the same pattern of rhyme in their quintains. Here, the rhymes track the poem’s rhythms: the A rhymes always land on a short dimeter line (a line of two beats, as in “That now | she knows”), and the B rhymes always land on a long tetrameter line (a line of four beats, as in “Tell her | that wastes | her time | and me”). The rhyme thus helps to emphasize the poem’s swinging rhythm (and the speaker’s energetic tone of voice).
That double B rhyme at the end of the stanzas captures something of the speaker’s mood, too. There’s something insistent in the reiterated sound, especially because those paired closing lines usually make a stern point about the folly of the lady’s resistance. The poem’s final words—“How small a part of time they share / That are so wondrous sweet and fair!”—feel particularly potent underscored by that rhymed couplet.
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“Go, Lovely Rose” Speaker
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The poem’s speaker is a frustrated lover. Like the speakers of many carpe diem poems, he’s impatiently asking his lady-love to return his affections before it’s too late: she “wastes her time and me,” he says, when she “shuns to have her graces spied,” when she refuses to come out and be loved.
His is a common refrain in 17th-century British poetry. Waller’s speaker joins those of near-contemporaries like Robert Herrick and Andrew Marvell in reminding a lady that, while she’s gorgeous and fresh and sweet as a rosebud now, her time of youth and beauty won’t last forever, so she’d better enjoy it while she can—and, more to the point, enjoy it with him.
Readers might thus notice an oddly mixed tone here, as in so many carpe diem poems. On the one hand, this speaker praises his lady’s beauty in idealized romantic terms: she’s as “sweet and fair” as a perfect rose. On the other, the speaker indirectly threatens his lady with the looming prospect of old age and death. A rose that hides away in places “where no men abide,” he not-so-subtly hints, is a rose that will wither away and die “uncommended,” unappreciated—wasted, in short. The only way his lady can really make the most of her youth and beauty, the speaker thus concludes, is to come out of hiding and “suffer herself to be desired”—endure being admired and pursued.
Like the speaker of many carpe diem poems, this fellow has a voice that mingles wit, passion, frustration, and the merest hint of cruelty.
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“Go, Lovely Rose” Setting
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There’s no clear setting for this poem: it seems to take place in an abstract, idealized world of blushing roses and empty “desert[s].” The subject and form, however, make it clear that this is a poem of its era. Carpe diem poems like this one—that is, poems in which a lover urges his reluctant beloved to submit to his romantic advances—were in vogue in 17th-century England, Edmund Waller’s time and place. (This is one example among many from the period: some 17th-century carpe diem poems are among the most famous and beautiful in the English language.)
If readers imagine that the poem is indeed taking place in Waller’s own world, its meaning gets a little more complex. The central point of a carpe diem poem is that youth and beauty must be enjoyed while they’re fresh because they certainly won’t last. But the implied conclusion—that the beloved lady should therefore give the speaker the attention he wants—has higher stakes in a culture where women weren’t meant to have sex before they were married. The speaker of this poem suggests he wants only to “admire[]” this lady out in the open, but many of his colleagues suggest they’re looking for something a lot more intimate than that.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Go, Lovely Rose”
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Literary Context
Edmund Waller (1606-1687) was an English writer and politician whose career spanned the tumultuous years of the English Civil War and the Restoration. He would become one of several poet-politicians involved with the court of King Charles II.
"Go, Lovely Rose" is by far Waller's most famous work, and it fits into a fashionable English poetic tradition of the 17th century: the carpe diem poem. These poems, in which a lover urges his beloved to give into his advances while everyone involved is still young and beautiful, were a favorite form for poets from Robert Herrick to Andrew Marvell. Waller's entry to the genre was first published under the title "Song" in his 1645 collection Poems, and set to music, it quickly became popular.
In his life as a member of Parliament, Waller became friends with notable political-literary figures like Dryden and Hobbes. His elegant versification would go on to inspire the major Enlightenment-era poet Alexander Pope.
Historical Context
Edmund Waller lived through one of the most dramatic episodes in English history: the English Civil War. In this earthshaking conflict, the Roundheads, led by Oliver Cromwell, rose up against the Cavaliers, forces loyal to King Charles I and to the monarchy in general. Cromwell's Roundheads argued for increased Parliamentary power as a curb on kingly tyranny.
This clash came to a dramatic climax in 1649 when Cromwell's forces tried, convicted, and beheaded Charles I for treason. This execution was a huge shock to a country whose recent monarchs had proclaimed the "divine right of kings," the idea that kings and queens were appointed by God.
Cromwell's stand against such ideas would start to look ironic when he began to exercise dictatorial control in his role as "Lord Protector." His power and popularity soon waned, and England invited Charles I's exiled son Charles II back to the throne. The young king's return ushered in a period known as the Restoration, an era of luxury, elegance, and wit.
Waller, a politician as well as a poet, was one of many writers who found himself tossed around on the stormy seas of these years. After Charles I was deposed, Waller was convicted of treason for his Royalist sympathies and narrowly escaped execution himself. He was exiled to Europe for nearly a decade, only returning to England when Cromwell (a distant relation of his) invited him. Despite that debt to Cromwell, Waller would go on to become a successful politician and courtier after the Restoration.
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More “Go, Lovely Rose” Resources
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External Resources
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The Poem Aloud — Listen to a reading of the poem.
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A Brief Biography — Learn more about Waller.
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The Poem Set to Music — Listen to a musical version of this poem.
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Portraits of Waller — See some images of Waller—as a young man and as an august, bewigged old politician.
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