Robert Herrick

“ 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. ”

“ ROBERT HERRICK. This poet—a bird with tropical plumage, and norland sweetness of song —was born in Cheapside, London, in 1591. His father, was an eminent goldsmith. Herrick was sent to Cambridge; and having entered into holy orders, and being patronised by the Earl of Exeter, he was, in 1629, presented by Charles I. to the vicarage of Dean Prior, in Devonshire. Here he resided for twenty years, till ejected by the civil war. He seems all this time to have felt little relish either for his profession or parishioners. ”

“ Alves smiled at the earnest kindness of the old dentist, but shook her head firmly. Dr. Leonard gathered up his overcoat and silk hat, but seemed loath to go. He peered out of the windows that Sommers had put into the big doors of the temple.
"It's like your living out here in this ramshackle old chicken-coop, when you might have a tidy flat on Paulina Street; and the doctor could have a desk in my office next door to his old boss." Dr. Leonard spoke testily, and Alves laid her hand soothingly on his arm.
"I guess we aren't made to be like other people." ”

“ Less happy, less enjoying thee.
Thou never plough'st the ocean's foam
To seek and bring rough pepper home;
Nor to the Eastern Ind dost rove
To bring from thence the scorched clove;
Nor, with the loss of thy lov'd rest,
Bring'st home the ingot from the West.
No, thy ambition's masterpiece
Flies no thought higher than a fleece;
Or how to pay thy hinds, and clear
All scores, and so to end the year:
But walk'st about thine own dear bounds,
Not envying others larger grounds:
For well thou know'st 'tis not th' extent
Of land makes life, but sweet content. ”

“ It is not well to live without fierceness and passion."
The last lights from the fire flickered over her dark hair and sombre face. She was breathing heavily close by his side, throwing into the soft night a passionate warmth of feeling. It set his pulses beating in response.
"You are so insistent upon happiness," the man cried.
"Yes," she nodded. "To die out without this"—her hand pointed to the blackened Court of Honor—"is to have lived unfulfilled. That is what I felt as a child in the rich fields of Wisconsin, as a girl at the chapel of the seminary." ”

“ 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. ”

“ THE APPARITION OF HIS, MISTRESS, CALLING HIM TO ELYSIUM DESUNT NONNULLA— Come then, and like two doves with silvery wings, Let our souls fly to th' shades, wherever springs Sit smiling in the meads; where balm and oil, Roses and cassia, crown the untill'd soil; Where no disease reigns, or infection comes To blast the air, but amber-gris and gums. This, that, and ev'ry thicket doth transpire More sweet than storax from the hallow'd fire ”

“ It is fiercer—not mere play."
"Nature has taken a hand," Sommers said grimly, "and knocks about man's toys. Look!"
He pointed to the fairylike brightness of the island in the lagoon. The green leafage of the shrubbery was suffused in tender light; the waters reflected calmly all their drapery, but none of the savage desolation of the pyre in the Court of Honor. Beyond where the gracious pile of the Art Building stretched across the horizon the light clouds of smoke floated, a gray wreath in the night. ”

“ Pay we our vows and go; yet when we part, Then, even then, I will bequeath my heart Into thy loving hands; for I'll keep none To warm my breast, when thou, my pulse, art gone, No, here I'll last, and walk, a harmless shade, About this urn, wherein thy dust is laid, To guard it so, as nothing here shall be Heavy, to hurt those sacred seeds of thee.
67. HIS AGE: DEDICATED TO HIS PECULIAR FRIEND, MR JOHN WICKES, UNDER THE NAME OF POSTUMUS Ah, Posthumus! our years hence fly And leave no sound: nor piety, Or prayers, or vow Can keep the wrinkle from the brow ”

“ It’s the night of all others I’d go somewhere—get something. No! I won’t give in. I’ll get away from it, forget it, and be happy again. I will—see me do it.... They dine at half-past eight. Have the carriage at eight. I shall be ready.”
He walked to and fro in the dressing-room, wishing to say something that could soften her mood. At last he put his hand gently on her beautiful bare shoulders and lowered his face to hers.
“We must take this together, love,” he whispered simply.
“Don’t speak of it!” she cried, drawing herself from his touch. “Don’t touch me. I shall go mad, mad! ”

“ It was all snowy upland near the crest of the hill. They leaned against a rock, close together, and listened to the stillness around them, his arm beneath her cloak drawing her closer, closer to him, away from herself. In the forgetfulness of joy she seemed mounting, floating, high up above all, the man's desire bearing her on wings away from the earth with its failure and sorrow, up to the freedom she had thirsted for, up to fulfilment.... ”

“ To us he seems as real and as large a figure in his dim perspective as the largest and most alive that swaggers in the foreground of to-day. Do we not feel something weird and uncanny, something ghostly, on opening the Retrospective Review so late as 1825, and finding Robert Herrick gravely paraded as a new discovery? ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is useless and thankless to enlarge on such faults or such defects, as it would be useless and senseless to ignore. But how to enlarge, to expatiate, to insist on the charm of Herrick at his best—a charm so incomparable and so inimitable that even English poetry can boast of nothing quite like it or worthy to be named after it—the most appreciative reader will be the slowest to affirm or imagine that he can conjecture. This, however, he will hardly fail to remark: that Herrick, like most if not all other lyric poets, is not best known by his best work. ”

“ To take her by the either hand;
Nor car'st which comes the first, the foul or fair:
A wise man ev'ry way lies square,
And, like a surly oak with storms perplex'd,
Grows still the stronger, strongly vex'd. ”

“ His mind became tranquil as under the influence of a narcotic; it seemed such a little thing what he did over there in Camberton, and so far removed from the strong pulse that beat beneath his body deep down in the earth.
"Why are men so foolish," she whispered on. "We want really a few things only; quiet, rest, peace, tranquil bodies, and this great earth to shimmer and change forever." His eyes followed her face. Her skin was so transparent that each word seemed to make a dot of flashing color ”

“ TO HIS BROTHER, MR THOMAS HERRICK Thrice, and above, blest, my soul's half, art thou, In thy both last and better vow; Could'st leave the city, for exchange, to see The country's sweet simplicity; And it to know and practise, with intent To grow the sooner innocent; By studying to know virtue, and to aim More at her nature than her name; The last is but the least; the first doth tell Ways less to live, than to live well:— And both are known to thee, who now canst live Led by thy conscience, to give Justice to soon-pleased nature, and to show Wisdom and she together go, And keep one centre ”

“ 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? ”

“ The girl wanted to see the poet. Presently the night began to fall, the still odorous May night of Rome. The big arc-lamps shone down upon the crowded faces. Suddenly there was a forward swaying, [Pg 29] shouts and cheers from the station. A little man’s figure was being carried above the eager crowd. Then a motor bellowed for free passage through the human mass. A wave of song burst from thousands of throats, Mameli’s “L’Inno.” A little gray face passed swiftly. The poet had come and gone.
“Come!” Bianca exclaimed, taking my hand firmly and pulling the signora on the other side. ”

“ She felt as if all the significance of her act had been erased.
"You know your mother hasn't come back from the Springs," he added, "but they are expecting you at the house."
"Can't we go somewhere and have luncheon together? I want so much to see you!" she urged.
"I wish I might, but I have these lawyers on my hands—must take them to the club for luncheon. Sorry I shall be kept here until late in the afternoon. I will put you in a cab." And he led the way to the elevator. As always he was kind and considerate. ”

“ As a pastoral lyrist Herrick stands first among English poets. His genius is limited in scope, and comparatively unambitious, but in its own field it is unrivalled. His tiny poems—and of the thirteen hundred that he has left behind him not one is long—are like jewels of various value, heaped together in a casket. ”

“ But what is one to do? You've got to go on living somehow. Rob says we can't afford this house,—Rob is always afraid we won't get through. But we do somehow. I tell him that the good time is coming,—we must just anticipate it, draw a little on the future."
At this point the men came through the window to the piazza. Bessie shook her box of candy coquettishly at Lane, who took the chair beside her. Evidently he thought her amusing, as most men did. Falkner leaned against the white pillar and stared up at the heavens. ”

“ An edging of gold fired the black mass from time to time.
“Grand place you have here, Simmons,” Dr. Vessinger observed. “The top of a hill not too high,—that’s the right place for a country house.”
[16] “If Olaf were only here oftener,” the wife remarked. “He’s just come home, and he says he must leave soon again.”
“Yes, those Jews I work for, the Techheimer Brothers, mean that I shall earn my salary. They are dickering for some new mines in Mexico, and want me to look them over.”
“But you are promised to me for the tenth,” Mrs. Bellflower protested. ”

“ Who'll let ye by their fire sit, Although ye have a stock of wit, Already coin'd to pay for it? —I cannot tell: unless there be Some race of old humanity Left, of the large heart and long hand, Alive, as noble Westmorland; Or gallant Newark; which brave two May fost'ring fathers be to you. If not, expect to be no less Ill used, than babes left fatherless.
9. NOT EVERY DAY FIT FOR VERSE 'Tis not ev'ry day that I Fitted am to prophesy: No, but when the spirit fills The fantastic pannicles, Full of fire, then I write As the Godhead doth indite. ”

“ Quoi que nous puissions faire, Je souffre; il est trop tard; le monde s'est fait vieux. Une immense esperance a traverse la terre; Malgre nous vers le ciel il faut lever les yeux.
Indeed, Herrick's deepest debt to ancient literature lies not in the models which he directly imitated, nor in the Anacreontic tone which with singular felicity he has often taken. These are common to many writers with him:—nor will he who cannot learn more from the great ancient world ever rank among poets of high order, or enter the innermost sanctuary of art. ”

“ The old miner came stamping over the loose boards of the veranda.
“The place will sure drop to pieces, like all the rest,” he observed, “if something ain’t done to it mighty quick.”
“Where do you suppose she went?” the young man asked abruptly.
“The girl? Goodness only knows. P’r’aps she went to her mother’s folks, or p’r’aps out to the coast after him—who can tell? ’Twould be like hunting for a young rabbit out there!” He nodded toward the gray plain.
By the time that Brainard reached the Waldorf, the landlady had roused herself, and she undertook to provide the traveler with food and room. ”

“ Are you honest? Are you an honest man? Tell me, and I will believe you."
"I have said all that I am going to say about that matter," he answered stubbornly.
"Then, Francis, I go!"
The next afternoon the architect met his family at the train and saw them start, punctiliously doing all the little things that he could to make their journey comfortable. He referred to their going as a short vacation trip, and joked with the boys about the farm. Just before the train started, while Mrs. Spellman settled the children in their section, Helen walked up and down the platform with him. ”