Pronto, não resisti a contextualizar com um excerto do guião do filme:

[...] The walls are lined with class pictures: dating back into the 1800s. School trophies of every description fill trophy cases and shelves. Keating leads the students in, then faces the class.
KEATING Mister... (Keating looks at his roll) Pitts. An unfortunate name. Stand up, Mister Pitts.
Pitts stands.
KEATING Open your text, Pitts, to page forty and read for us the first stanza of the poem.
Pitts looks through his book. He finds the poem.
PITTS To The Virgins to Make Much Of Time?
KEATING That's the one.
Giggles in the class. Pitts reads.
PITTS Gather ye rosebuds while ye may / Old time is still a flying / And this same flower that smiles today / Tomorrow will be dying.
KEATING Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. The Latin term for that sentiment is "Carpe Diem." Anyone know what that means?
MEEKS Carpe Diem... seize the day.
KEATING Very good, Mr._?
MEEKS Meeks.
KEATING Seize the day while you're young, see that you make use of your time. Why does the poet write these lines?
A STUDENT Because he's in a hurry?
KEATING Because we're food for worms, lads! Because we're only going to experience a limited number of springs, summers, and falls. One day, hard as it is to believe, each and every one of us is going to stop breathing, turn cold, and die! Stand up and peruse the faces of the boys who attended this school sixty or seventy years ago. Don't be timid, go look at them.
The boys get up. Todd, Neil, Knox, Meeks, etc. go over to the class pictures that line the honor room walls.
ANGLES ON VARIOUS PICTURES ON THE WALLS. Faces of young men stare at us from out of the past.
KEATING They're not that different than any of you, are they? There's hope in their eyes, just like in yours. They believe themselves destined for wonderful things, just like many of you. Well, where are those smiles now, boys? What of that hope?
THE BOYS are staring at the pictures, sobered by what Keating is saying.
KEATING Did most of them not wait until it was too late before making their lives into even one iota of what they were capable? In chasing the almighty deity of success did they not squander their boyhood dreams? Most of those gentlemen are fertilizing daffodils! However, if you get very close, boys, you can hear them whisper. Go ahead, lean in. near it? (loud whisper) 'Carpe Diem, lads. Seize the day. Make your lives extraordinary.

Tom Schulman