Q: Robert Herrick uses “ye” during most of “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time,” but switches to “you” at the end. Are both ”ye” and “you” in the subjective case in the poem?
A: Yes, both “ye” and “you” are subjects in “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time,” a 17th-century poem famous for its opening lines:
Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
Old time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying.
But as you’ve noticed, he uses “you” only once—in the last line of the last stanza:
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.
As is turns out, our modern word “you” originally had four principal forms. In Old English, the subjects were “ye” (plural) and “thou” (singular); the objects were “you” (plural) and “thee” (singular).
But by the time Herrick was writing, “you” had become the standard second-person pronoun in English, whether subject or object, singular or plural. Although “ye,” “thee,” and “thou” were archaic by then (along with the possessives “thy” and “thine”), they were still seen in poetry and religious writing.
As the British linguist David Crystal explains in The Stories of English (2004), the rules for using the second-person pronouns began to change in Middle English: “The first change was the emergence of you as a singular, noticeably during the second half of the thirteenth century.”
A second change, Crystal writes, took place during the 16th century, when “the difference between the subject and object forms gradually disappeared, and you became the norm in both situations. Ye was still used at the end of the century, but only in contexts which were somewhat literary, religious, or archaic.”
The Oxford English Dictionary notes that “you” has “long been the invariable form as both subject and object form in almost all contexts in the modern standard language.”
So why does Herrick switch from “ye” to “you” in the last line of “To the Virgins”? He may have considered “you” (the standard form in the early Modern English of the 17th century) more forceful than the poetic “ye,” and better at emphasizing his warning.
Finally, here’s the full poem, with its original spelling and long “s” (ſ), from Hesperides: or, the Works, Both Humane and Divine of Robert Herrick Esq. (1648):
To the Virgins, to make much of Time.
Gather ye Roſe-buds while ye may,
Old Time is ſtill a flying :
And this ſame flower that ſmiles to day,
To morrow will be dying.The glorious Lamp of Heaven the Sun,
The higher he’s a getting ;
The ſooner will his Race be run,
And neerer he’s to Setting.That Age is beſt, which is the firſt,
When Youth and Blood are warmer ;
But being ſpent, the worſe, and worſt
Times, ſtill ſucceed the former.Then be not coy, but uſe your time ;
And while ye may, goe marry :
For having loſt but once your prime,
You may for ever tarry.
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