Gather therefore the Rose, whilst yet is prime,
For soon comes age, that will her pride deflower:
Gather the Rose of love, whilst yet is time.

The lines urge a classic carpe diem message: seize love and youth while they are at their height, because time and age will inevitably diminish beauty and opportunity. The rose functions as a conventional emblem of youthful bloom and erotic/romantic possibility; to “gather” it is to take up love before it fades. The phrasing also carries a moralizing edge typical of Renaissance lyric, presenting time as an active force that “deflowers” pride—suggesting that delay is not neutral but destructive. Read broadly, the passage frames desire and human flourishing as seasonal and perishable, making urgency itself part of the poem’s persuasion.