Robert Herrick (Everyman Poetry Library)

By: Douglas Brooks-Davies

Herrick lived through the civil wars and Restoration. In his best-known poems, Cherry Ripe and Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May, he writes of loss, of the passing of time and of death. This book... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0460877992
• ISBN13: 9780460877992
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: Everyman
• Length: 103 Pages
• Weight: 0.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.3" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

Light love

Herrick was a cleric , but his most famous verses are erotic playful ones, and not his devotional writing. Among them are some of the most well- known light lyrics in the language. Perhaps his most famous poem is : To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying; And this same flower that smiles today Tomorrow will be dying. The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun, The higher he's a-getting, The sooner will his race be run, And nearer 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, go marry; For having lost but once your prime, You may forever tarry." This famous poem has about it a lightness bordering on humor, a kind of ease and spirit of delight. It seems frankly far too hedonistic to come from a clergyman, but it certainly has given a lot of pleasure to readers. Herrick is a minor delight, and if he does not really compare in depth, complexity and power of passion to Donne, he does provide his own special voice and music.

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may...

One of my favorite 17th century English writers, the Cavalier poet Robert Herrick succeeds handily at the dual task of producing ridiculously pretty--and humorously erotic--love poetry (addressed mainly to two women named Julia and Anthea), as well as a series of religiously oriented poetry that is a striking contrast to the love poems for its down-to-earth devotion. He also wrote a number of laudatory pieces for friends, relatives and the occasional noble, as well as a variety of comic/pastoral/vie quotidienne poems. It is interesting to me, however, that he is far better known for the erotic verse than any of his other work (particularly the devotional poetry), given that he was a clergyman by profession.This volume provides a good, solid selection from Herrick's two collections, "Hesperides" and "His Noble Numbers", and includes several of his pastoral verses, encomia and comic pieces interspersed with the love poems and pious work. Alas, one of his most charming efforts is excluded, the lovely "Upon the Nipples of Julia's Breast" (and how can you go wrong with a title like that?). Nowhere near as popular as other 17th century writers such as Donne or Jonson or Dryden, and indeed somewhat less respected by lit crit types because his poetry does talk about things like nipples, daffodils and strawberries dipped in cream, Robert Herrick's accessible, graceful, smooth-flowing verse is nevertheless very much worth reading.