Read "Gather Ye Roses While Ye May" by Robert Louis Stevenson online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Gather ye roses while ye may, / Old time is still a-flying; / A world where beauty fleets away / Is no world for denying.
Come lads and lasses, fall to play / Lose no more time in sighing.
The very flowers you pluck today, / Tomorrow will be dying; / And all the flowers are crying, / And all the leaves have tongues to say --
Gather ye roses while ye may.
Since I Am Sworn to Live My Life / Since I am sworn to live my life, / And not to keep an easy heart, / Some men may sit and drink apart --
I bear a banner in the strife.
Some can take quiet thought to wife --
I am all day at tierce and carte; / Since I am sworn to live my life / And not to keep an easy heart.
I follow gaily to the fife, / Leave wisdom bowed above a chart / And prudence brawling in the mart, / And dare misfortune to the knife, / Since I am sworn to live my life.