Herrick

“ Herrick, indeed, though breathing the freshness of morning, is a delightful companion for night. He calls us so distinctly and seductively to leave, as he did, the grievous cares of life; to close our ears to the penetrating voice of duty ”

“ Of the lives of many poets we know too much; of some few too little. Lovers of Herrick are almost ideally fortunate. Just such a bare outline of his life has come down to us as is sufficient to explain the allusions in his poems, and, on the other hand, there is no temptation to substitute chatter about his relations with Julia and Dianeme for enjoyment of his delightful verse. ”

“ It was good wine, too, that was set upon the table, and Herrick began to discover how hungry he really was. For a long time his attention was confined to the business in hand, and then he suddenly became conscious of the conversation on the other side of the partition. It seemed to have taken a more serious turn, the voices were dropped a little, and it was this fact, no doubt, which made Herrick listen unconsciously.
"Such men as he is die hard," said one man. "The old Duke may hold death at arm's length for years yet." ”

“ Francis replied. "What do we care whether they come back or not?" and he leaned forward to peer at Herrick; but the pirate's face was inscrutable. He straightened back with a sigh, and looked up to where I lay.
"It is a shame," the priest went on, "to keep so gallant a gentleman here in this hole. If he loves the maid, let him have her, and be hanged to him."
"Thou wilt sing a different tune, when I tell the Count what thou hast said," Herrick answered, and he leaned back calmly against the rock.
"Hell and the furies!" cried the old rogue, his face white with terror. ”

“ Amongst the various chances of the civil war, five times had the day been appointed for the union of Henry Lisle with Margaret Herrick, and five times had some unforeseen mishap intervened to delay what all so much desired. Each day that went by, Lady Herrick, with means quite exhausted and hopes quite depressed, longed more and more to see her child united to a man of talent, and firmness, and resource; and each battle that passed by, Sir George Herrick, struck with a presentiment of approaching fate, thanked God that he had lived to place his sister's hand in that of his friend. ”

“ But in our Flower legends Herrick will be heard to greatest advantage; in grace, fancy, and the most melodious cadences of verse, he is unrivalled, either by old or modern writers. Yet while thus eulogising his really sweet poems, I ought, perhaps, to add, that these shine out but as straggling stars in a clouded sky; and that in the entire collection of his works there is far more to pass over than to pause and admire; a selection of Herrick's poems would form so valuable and delightful a volume, I much wonder such a work has not yet been published. ”

“ The sturdy student who tackles his Herrick as a schoolboy is expected to tackle his Horace, in a spirit of pertinacious and stolid straightforwardness, will probably find himself before long so nauseated by the incessant inhalation of spices and flowers, condiments and kisses, that if a musk-rat had run over the page it could hardly be less endurable to the physical than it is to the spiritual stomach. The fantastic and the brutal blemishes which deform and deface the loveliness of his incomparable genius are hardly so damaging to his fame as his general monotony of matter and of manner. ”

“ Here are no “tears from the depth of some divine despair,” no probings into the tragic heart of man, no insight that goes much farther than the pathos of a cowslip on a maiden's grave. The tendrils of his verse reach up to the light, and love the warmer side of the garden wall. But the reader who does not detect the seriousness under the lightness misreads Herrick. Nearly all true poets have been wholesome and joyous singers. A pessimistic poet, like the poisonous ivy, is one of nature's sarcasms. In his own bright pastoral way Herrick must always remain unexcelled. ”

“ For the rest there is nothing in the 'Hesperides' to show that Herrick was a bigoted royalist. Utterances in favour of the divine right of kings and the duty of implicit obedience are not hard to find; but they are balanced by epigrams which show a much more Parliamentary spirit, and it is often difficult to tell where Herrick is expressing his own sentiments and where he is simply running into verse some sentence or phrase which happened to catch his attention. ”

“ There Robert Herrick lived, preaching and writing poems, through those eighteen troublous years which went before the execution of Charles I. What the goldsmith-vicar’s sermons were we can only conjecture: what the poems were he writ, we can easily guess from the flowers that enjewel them, or the rarer “noble numbers” [122] which take hold on religious sanctities. This preacher-poet twists the lilies and roses into bright little garlands, that blush and droop in his pretty couplets, as they did in the vicar’s garden of Devon. ”

“ He ground his teeth and moved into the moonlight before the open door.
"Miss Herrick, I believe?" he said, bowing. "I have been sent to acquaint you that your attendance is instantly requested at the statue of Artemis."
"Statue ... Artemis!" exclaimed Miss Herrick in wonder.
"Will you allow me?" he persisted.
A man's figure rose with hers, and he knew who it was before they emerged.
"Who wants me?" asked Julia Herrick.
"Good Heavens, as if I didn't!" said Severne to himself; but aloud: "A whole company, whose identity will be revealed to you when you join them." ”

“ If die I must, then my last vow shall be,
You'll with a tear or two remember me,
Your sometime poet; but if fates do give
Me longer date and more fresh springs to live,
Oft as your field shall her old age renew,
Herrick shall make the meadow-verse for you. ”

“ Herrick was conspicuously fond of this species of verse, and his works abound in gems of style and fancy, the difficulty being, not to find them, but to select from them. The beauty of one is apt to be rivalled by that of its neighbour. ”

“ At first sight the friendship between these two men seemed singularly ill-assorted; for what possible affinity could there be between a thoughtful, intellectual man like Malcolm Herrick, with his habitual reserve, his nature refined, critical, and yet imaginative, with its strong bias to pessimism, and its intolerance of all shams, and Cedric, with his facile, pleasure-loving temperament, at once indolent and mercurial—a creature of moods and tenses, as fiery as a Welshman, but full of lovable and generous impulses? ”

“ With all his great show of candor Herrick really reveals as little of himself as ever poet did. One thing, however, is manifest—he understood and loved music. None but a lover could have said:
The mellow touch of musick most doth wound The soule when it doth rather sigh than sound. ”

“ The critics, then, seem to me perverse, who, in spite of Herrick’s assurances, declare that he only pretended to dislike Dean Prior. They rely, presumably, on his keen eye for country beauties. Now I venture to doubt whether Herrick, as we see him in the Hesperides, is one of the real nature-poets. He knows and loves certain aspects of nature, more particularly fruits and flowers, bright colours and sweet smells. Even amongst these he is often happiest when he can trace some likeness to human beauty. ”

“ He did not believe that Rupert Ormsby had ever delegated any such authority to the fellow who had meanly tripped him and broken his leg. He obeyed Herrick's orders and straightened up to hear his criticism and advice, but he listened sullenly, and Herrick was conscious of the boy's resentment. He exercised his authority as little as possible. He did not go shouting and clamoring round like Frank Windsor, who had a great idea of the inspiriting quality in mere noise, and he did not jump into a scrimmage and begin scolding and denouncing whenever somebody made a bad play. ”

“ His verses to the Earl of Pem broke, to Endymion Porter and to others, show that he was glad of " pay " as well as " praise," but the system of patronage brought no dis credit with it, and though the absence of any poetical mention of his uncle suggests that the rich goldsmith was not well-pleased with his nephew, with the rest of his well-to-do relations Herrick seems to have remained on excellent terms. ”

“ This quality of remoteness and nearness belongs, in a striking degree, to Herrick's poems. They are as novel to-day as they were on the lips of a choice few of his contemporaries, who, in reading them in their freshness, must surely have been aware here and there of the ageless grace of old idyllic poets dead and gone.
Herrick was the bearer of no heavy message to the world, and such message as he had he was apparently in no hurry to deliver. On this point he somewhere says:
Let others to the printing presse run fast; Since after death comes glory, I 'll not haste. ”

“ His lids were closed over his eyes, lying like little pieces of pale yellow parchment under the faint red eyelashes.
"Here we are!" he cried. "Out you get, Herrick." And as Harkness stepped out of the car something deep within him whispered: "I am going to be hurt. Pain is coming——"
Before him swung a cavern of light. It swung because on his stepping from the car he was dizzy, dizzy with a kind of poignant thick scent in the soul's nostrils, deep deep down as though he were at the edge of being spiritually anæsthetised. ”

“ Whose love grows more inflam'd by being foes.
But to forsake thee ever, could there be
A thought of such-like possibility?
When thou thyself dar'st say thy isles shall lack
Grapes before Herrick leaves canary sack.
Thou mak'st me airy, active to be borne,
Like Iphiclus, upon the tops of corn.
Thou mak'st me nimble, as the winged hours,
To dance and caper on the heads of flowers,
And ride the sunbeams. Can there be a thing
Under the heavenly Isis [I] that can bring
More love unto my life, or can present
My genius with a fuller blandishment? ”

“ Few of the poems extend beyond fifteen or twenty lines in length, and many are mere epigrams of four lines or even two. The chief secular subjects are: Herrick's devotion to various ladies, Julia, Anthea, Perilla, and sundry more, all presumably more or less imaginary; the joy and uncertainty of life; the charming beauty of Nature; country life, folk lore, and festivals; and similar light or familiar themes. Herrick's characteristic quality, so far as it can be described, is a blend of Elizabethan joyousness with classical perfection of finish. ”

“ See, I have brought what shall pass you easily through the streets." And he produced a priest's cassock and cloak with a hood, which he had deftly fastened round him under the folds of his smock. "I borrowed them from St. Etienne." And then, as Herrick arrayed himself in the garments, he silently clapped his hands. "You are more like a priest than most of the real ones I know," he chuckled.
"I do not know how I am to travel to Passey, but, at least, I trust you, and there's the proof of it," said Herrick, handing the dwarf his knife. ”

“ The person, however, who knows more of Herrick than all the rest of the neighbourhood we found to be a poor woman in the 99th year of her age, named Dorothy King. She repeated to us, with great exactness, five of his Noble Numbers, among which was his beautiful 'Litany'. These she had learnt from her mother, who was apprenticed to Herrick's successor at the vicarage. She called them her prayers, which she said she was in the habit of putting up in bed, whenever she could not sleep; and she therefore began the 'Litany' at the second stanza:—
'When I lie within my bed,' etc. ”

“ AN ODE TO MASTER ENDYMION PORTER, UPON
HIS BROTHER'S DEATH.
Not all thy flushing suns are set,
Herrick, as yet;
Nor doth this far-drawn hemisphere
Frown and look sullen ev'rywhere.
Days may conclude in nights, and suns may rest
As dead within the west ”

“ As the eyesight fluctuates, and gives the advantage to different colours in turn, so to the varying moods of the mind the same beauty does not always seem equally beautiful. Thus from the 'purple light' of our later poetry there are hours in which we may look to the daffodil and rose-tints of Herrick's old Arcadia, for refreshment and delight. And the pleasure which he gives is as eminently wholesome as pleasurable. Like the holy river of Virgil, to the souls who drink of him, Herrick offers 'securos latices.' He is conspicuously free from many of the maladies incident to his art. ”

“ What need of names?”
“Even in love a poison lies!” murmured Herrick, and looked up languishingly at Ellinor’s unseeing face.
“No doubt,” said Harcourt, in a most indifferent voice, “so wise a philosopher as Master Simon always locks up his poisons!”
“Child,” pursued the old man, “I tell you, this herb which was lost to the world, but which you yourself found again, planted and nurtured, is destined to be the greatest boon mankind has yet known! ”

“ Harcourt laughed good-humouredly, almost paternally. “I was going, I declare, to commit the folly, unpardonable in my years, of offering a young man advice. I was going to say, my good lad, that from the poetic point of view, your visit here must have been so inspiring, so, what shall I say? so eminently successful, that it would be a thousand pities for you to prolong it. Disillusion,” he added, with a light sigh, “swiftly follows upon joy.”
Herrick chewed a thousand savage retorts, but let not one escape beyond his clenched teeth. ”

“ Herrick decreed a retreat to the Western Hills. Seldom though he emerged from his dwelling, the man could not escape the hubbub of a city which slept and prattled out of doors. The barking of mongrel dogs agitated him and made him restless at night. He wished a place where he could think his troublesome problem to an issue, so his fancy turned to the solitude of the hills. He would carry off Kuei-lien like a bride, take Nancy and Edward and the old nurse, and leave the rest of the family to babble away the summer in Peking. ”