Herrick’s poem is a wine-warm invitation to seize the moment. The speaker urges us to drink, dance, play pipes, and kiss our lovers day and night while kinder fates allow it. He calls on Bacchus, the god of wine, and imagines rousing the ancient poet Anacreon from the dead just to send him back to bed drunk. Sing over Horace’s verses, he says, because death will soon arrive and cut the song short. The names Wilson and Gotiere—musicians of Herrick’s own time—will then never perform again.
The mood is at once fizzy and fleeting, all jangling merriment laced with a chill undercurrent. Every command to drink and dance feels breathless, as if the speaker is trying to crowd as much life as possible into the shrinking space before the final silence. The invitation is less carefree than it first sounds; the laughter rings loud because a deeper silence is on its way. There’s a desperate edge to the gaiety, a fierce appetite for joy precisely because it cannot last.