Lesson Overview - Carpe Diem Poems - Where are the Snows of Yesteryear? 

The lesson can also be found on my Lesson Notes below - which are written directly on the poems we look at.  There may be points below that are not found on the Lesson Notes and visa-versa.

Inside the Classroom

1. Robert Herrick's "Upon Julia's Clothes"

I begin by telling the students a little (very) about Robert Herrick - he was a priest - not a very good one - but he was a great poet.  And them I tell them about being their age (15-17) and watching a show on TV called "To Serve Them All My Years".  And I talk about how the main character was an English Teacher - and he read this poem (see the handout below) to his class - and it made the poem come alive for them and for me as a viewer (and perhaps made me want to become an English teacher).  I tell the students to watch me as I read and I try to recreate what the teacher did - when he get to the part about Julia's "brave vibrations each way free" I move my hand to indicate Julia moving in the clothes.  I also tell the students this is one of only two poems that I have completely memorized (and I read it from memory).  This poem is NOT directly related to the Carpe Diem idea, but is a great way to introduce Herrick and get the ideas (and Julia's silk gown) flowing.

2. Momento Mori

Next - I tell the students that medieval Monks often used to build and sleep in their own coffins every night.  I ask the class - "Why?" - someone will say to remind them that they will die one day.  I also say that many of the Monks had emblems or mottoes sewn on their frocks that said Momento Mori - which mean's exactly what they just told me "Remember Death". (NOTE: Like most of the parts of this lesson, I do NOT hit the kids over the head and I let them make the connections themselves - that's were the real learning takes place).

3. Ou sont les niege d'hier?

I then ask the students to come to the window - get somewhere in the classroom where they can see outside.  I ask them: "What's on the street?"; "What's on the sidewalk?" - then I ask them - "What was there a week ago (or however long ago it was that it last snowed in Chicago).  They answer: "Snow!".  I say the French have an expression for this: "Ou sont les niege d'hier?" - "Where are the snows of yesteryear?"  I do ask the students to take notes - and I do ask that they try to put this together themselves - and to not talk about it with anyone - just think about it.

Outside the Classroom

4. Out to see the snowdrops.

I then tell the students to put their coats on - we are going outside!  (I had told them the day before and when I saw them in the hallway that day to bring their coats to class - hurray no homework).  As we leave - I tell the students they can be as expressive and happy-go-lucky as they like - but they are NOT to talk.  I want them to process all of this.  So we leave my classroom and walk to a place where I know the first flowers of spring - the snowdrops are blooming.  In thirty-two years of teaching this changed three times - but it was always within a block of our campus.  One of the hardest parts is you need to keep checking your spot to see if they're blooming yet  - once they bloom - they won't last long (a week or two).

We do have a lot of fun on our walk.  We have to cross the street and I ask that the students hold hands with a partner if they wish - and to be extra careful.  Then we get to our spot - and I ask the students what they see.  Usually it takes a few minutes - and then someone will see - down on the ground the small unassuming little snowdrop flowers blooming away.  I ask the students - "What will happen if we come back here in two weeks?"  Someone will answer - "They'll be gone."  Leave it at that - that is enough.

5. To the Virgins to Make Much of Time

Oh - I've asked the students to take their handouts, something to write on (binder), and pen out with them on this field trip.  In front of the snow drops - I being to read Robert Herrick's "To The Virgins to Make Much of Time".  See my notes on the poem (on the Lesson Notes below).  But some of the things that I go over - and questions that I ask, include:

• What happens with time? (it flies)

• What happens to the flowers that are beautiful today (and I may bring up The Nymph's reply to the Shepherd 

• What's great about the sun at noon? (It's bright, sunny, vibrant).  What's the downside to that noon timing?  (The day is now closer to ending than when it began).  I also ask them what "glorious lamp of heaven" is - and some glorous student always remember that such a phrase is a kenning - from the Anglo-Saxon Unit - six months ago.

• Why does Herrick say that "youth" is the best age?  (passion, fire, and when it's gone - it's over

• I ask them what coy means - and we come to an understanding of the word.  (being flirty, playing games, etc.)

• So why not be coy?  (There is no time).

• And when you grow old - then you can take your time - because your youth is over.

I always bring up two things - Yes - this is ageist; BUT is age always measured in years? Can someone be "younger" at 70 than someone at 15?

6. Heading back to the Classroom and The Pictures on the Wall

Keep in mind - I did this before the movie "Dead Poets Society" came out! First off - I ask the students to keep quiet as we leave the snowdrops and head back in.  I really want them to think about the poem, the flowers, the monks, and putting it all together. On our way back to our classroom - once we get inside the school building, we have two stops.  The first stop , before we reach the staircase, is where we pause for a minute or two at the array of Senior Class Photos that are on the wall.  I ask them to think about those panoramic photos that are on the wall that date back to the early 1980's.

I then point out a few of the students - and tell brief stories about them in my class.  One year - a student pointed out someone in a picture to the entire class and said that was his mother, who it turned out that I knew...

Our next stop is on the stairwell going up where there is a mural on the wall featuring a former student - a collage of many pictures of her life  but centered around the student swimming in a Whitney Young Swimsuit.  I never had in all the years since the mural went up anyone know who she was - so I tell them.  She was an in incredible student at our school - not in my class - but who I knew.  She would always say hi - and hung out with a lot of my students.  I tell my classes, as we stand before the painting, that she was tragically taken from us one day - on the way to school - in an accident.  We then head back to the classroom.

Back in the Classroom

7. Carpe Diem and the first Video

Back in the classroom, I ask the students (after they are seated and their notes are out) if they know what we call poems like "To the Virgins to Make Much of Time"?  You may need to prompt them (I did sometimes) - "Poems that say time is short - that we have to make the most of the time we have."  Someone will respond with "Carpe Diem". 

I then ask them if they know what "Carpe Diem" means - someone will say - "Seize the Day!" and then usually (though not always) some Latin student will add - "Well, it literarally means 'Pluck the Day'!".  And then I ask them - "Ok - but what does that mean?" - and we get into a brief discussion - or at least their impression of what it means - I stay out of it for now.  I do say that I was reading a news article one day - and it gave me a clarity of what that means.  I then show the First Video - "All Stars" (found below)

The video - set to the tune of "You're an All-Star" (by Smash Mouth - the ultimate Carpe Diem song) consists of series of pictures that are set to the lyrics of the song.  But it begins with the story of a man who went on a trip with his wife to do some bird watching - wanting to see at least one new species - and died on his last day of the trip, seeing that one new bird.  The rest of the video is a series of the ordinary and the extraordinary - Famous People doing the things the song describes and then everyday people doing the same.  The video ends with a picture of that bird that the birdwatcher saw on his last day - to me, this is what Carpe Diem means.

I then tell the students that the story of that man really solidified, for me, what I believe "Carpe Diem" to be.  It doesn't mean being Hedonistic - going crazy and doing whatever you want - what feels good - it means doing what you love and what you love best - like there will be no tomorrow.

8. Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress"

I have made a huge point on this website about the importance of letting students do the reading aloud in my class.  And 98% of the time I do.  But today - I do the readings - One, these poems are personal to me, and I can bring that into my reading.  Two, for time's sake.  Keep in mind this lesson - including walking to the flowers outside and coming back has to be done in one class period.

I then read Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" - stopping to talk about the lines after I read them.  To see my complete notes and instructions, please see the The Lesson Notes and Poem pdf found below.  But here are some of my main points:

line 1 "Had we but world enough, and time" - I ask the students - what's the key word here (echoes of the Nymph's Reply)?  "Had" is the key word.  WHY? It implies they neither have time nor space enough to do what he is about to describe.
lines 2-4 - There's that word "coy" again - build on what was said before with "To the Virgins".  Why can't they be coy and play games?  Because there is not enough time.
lines 5-10 - IF they had time, she could refuse his love and they could dawdle (from before Noah's Flood until the End of the World)
line 11-12 - "My vegetable love" - I ask them what that means - yes - if they had time their love could grow as slow as vegetables in a garden  - and it would grow "vaster than empires" (and I point out Ursula Le Guin - a brilliant writer used that phrase for the title of a book she wrote).
lines 13-20 - And he describes ALL of the things they would do - and that he would admire about her - IF they had the time - but of course - the IF implies they don't  have that time.
lines 21-22 - "But at my back I always hear / Time's winged chariot hurrying near." - THESE are the lines that define my teaching - this website and everything that I believe  about education.  There is not a lot of time we are given - so we must use every second.  My bell ringers are getting started right away on the lesson so we can use all the time we have and read and talk about reading and learn from each other.
lines 23-24 - What a cool line: "And yonder all before us lie / Deserts of vast eternity."  I ask the students for the cool word here.  LIE - yes the deserts are stretched out in front of us like eternity but also they "lie" they tell a falsehood - tricking us into thinking we have more time.
lines 25-32 - What will happen to their beauty when they die?  None embrace in the tomb.  If we wait too long - our chance is gone.
lines 33-37 -  So - while we are young (at least in heart if not body) and filled with passion, let us love and  use that spirit that we have for a short time.
lines 38-46 -  Let us become one (a wonderful precursor to Donne's "Valediction Forbidding Mourning") and no one can make  Time Stand Still - but if we seize the day - we will take control of time and "make him run".

My Ann Arbor & John Lennon Story

Next, I tell the students a story about when I was just a little bit older than they are now.  It's a story about coming to realize, on a personal level, what Carpe Diem means.  You should probably tell your own such story but you are more than welcome to use mine.

Addressed to the students: "When I was 19 (not much older than  you), I worked as a field assistant for my brother - a famous geologist.  He was working on a project to remap the world over millions of years (continental drift) - so we were travelling through the Blue Ridge Mountains out east - taking core samples of rock so we could get their paleomagnetic reading at the time they were created.  

After a summer of sleeping in tents and under stars and travelling winding roads of Virginia and West Virginia - it was time to get the measurement on all of those core samples we worked so hard to get.  The best place to do it was at the Paleomagnetism Lab at the University of Michigan.  But, because my brother was not a student or faculty there - we could only use the lab between the hours of Midnight and 8 in the morning.  This led to a crazy, pretty rough life for a couple of weeks.  We slept in a basement - on the cold floor in sleeping bags.  Got up at 10 - went out and got some breakfast - usually plastic wrapped sweet rolls and orange juice that wasn't really orange juice.  We'd stop at an arcade and play Missile Command and Robotron 2000 ("Run Puny Human").

So we lived that life and then after a couple of days - it must have been 1 or 2 in the morning, my brother came into the room where I was running one of the machines and said to me: "I'll bet you $500 dollars that the Beatles will never get together again."  I said "What are you talking about?"  Then he told me - "They just announced on the radio that someone shot and killed John Lennon."

So we stopped our work - turned on the radio - it was playing John Lennon and Beatles music.   In fact, John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono had just released an album not too long before - "Double Fantasy" and some of  the songs had already been getting a lot of airplay.   This was after a long hiatus.

In the middle of one of those songs and my brother turned to me, and I'll never forget this, he said - "That's why you have to work everyday at what you love; what you're good at.  You have to work like tomorrow will never come - because..., one day it won't."

And he's right - and there we were - living like prisoners and getting up at midnight - because this was my brother's love - his dream and he was so good at it.  And here I am - now - teaching - the things that I love more than anything else - and that I think I am better at than I am at anything else.  Every once in a while you need to ask yourself - "If I won 10 millions dollars in the Lottery - what would I do."  I know what'd I'd do - I still be teaching - I'd still be here telling stories to you.

"These are Days" - the second video

The last thing we do in class - the thing to leave the students with - is we watch a second video that I've made.  Set to the 10,000 Maniacs song, "These Are Days" - it is a compilation of my school and its students over the years - from the 1980's to the present.  I think the song works for everyone - but you may want to make your own compilation video.  It's important for students to see that things may look very different, but they really are the same - and the years - oh those years - how they do fly away.  "Ou sont les nieges d'hier?"  Where are the snows of yesteryear?