English Literature for Boys and Girls Part 49

A Lamb I keep, tame, with my morsels fed, Whose Dam An orphan left him, lately dead.

A Cat I keep, that plays about my house, Grown fat With eating many a miching** mouse.

To these A Tracy*** I do keep, whereby I please The more my rural privacy, Which are But toys to give my heart some ease; Where care None is, slight things do lightly please."

*Clucking.

**Thieving.

***His spaniel.

But Herrick did not love his country home and parish or his people. We are told that the gentry round about loved him "for his florid and witty discourses." But his people do not seem to have loved these same discourses, for we are also told that one day in anger he threw his sermon from the pulpit at them because they did not listen attentively. He says:--

"More discontents I never had, Since I was born, than here, Where I have been, and still am sad, In this dull Devonshire."

Yet though Herrick hated Devonshire, or at least said so, it was this same wild country that called forth some of his finest poems. He himself knew that, for in the next lines he goes on to say:--

"Yet justly, too, I must confess I ne'er invented such Enn.o.bled numbers for the press, Than where I loathed so much."

Yet it is not the ruggedness of the Devon land we feel in Herrick's poems. We feel rather the beauty of flowers, the warmth of sun, the softness of spring winds, and see the greening trees, the morning dews, the soft rains. It is as if he had not let his eyes wander over the wild Devonshire moorlands, but had confined them to his own lovely garden and orchard meadow, for he speaks of the "dew-bespangled herb and tree," the "damasked meadows," the "silver shedding brooks." Hardly any English poet has written so tenderly of flowers as Herrick. One of the best known of these flower poems is To Daffodils.

"Fair Daffodils, we weep to see You haste away so soon; As yet the early-rising sun Has not attain'd his noon.

Stay, stay, Until the hasting day Has run But to the Even-song; And, having pray'd together, we Will go with you along.

We have short time to stay, as you, We have as short a spring; As quick a growth to meet decay, As you, or anything.

We die As your hours do, and dry Away, Like to the summer's rain; Or as the pearls of morning's dew, Ne'er to be found again."

And here is part of a song for May morning:--

"Get up, get up for shame, the blooming morn Upon her wings presents the G.o.d unshorn.

See how Aurora throws her fair Fresh-quilted colours through the air: Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see The dew bespangling herb and tree, Each flower has wept and bow'd toward the east Above an hour since; yet you not dress'd; Nay! not so much as out of bed?

When all the birds have matins said And sung their thankful hymns, 'tis sin, Nay, profanation to keep in, Whenas a thousand virgins on this day Spring, sooner than the lark to fetch in May.

Rise and put on your foliage, and be seen To come forth, like the Spring-time, fresh and green And sweet as Flora. Take no care For jewels for your gown or hair; Fear not; the leaves will strew Gems in abundance upon you: Besides, the childhood of the day has kept, Against you come, some orient pearls unwept; Come and receive them while the light Hangs on the dew-locks of the night: And t.i.tan on the eastern hill Retires himself, or else stands still Till you come forth. Wash, dress, be brief in praying; Few beads are best when once we go a-Maying."

Another well-known poem of Herrick's is:--

"Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying: And this same flower that smiles to-day, To-morrow 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 for ever tarry."

Herrick only published one book. He called it The Hesperides, or the works both Human and Divine. The "divine" part although published in the same book, has a separate name, being called his n.o.ble Numbers. The Hesperides, from whom he took the name of his book, were lovely maidens who dwelt in a beautiful garden far away on the verge of the ocean. The maidens sang beautifully, so Herrick took their name for his book, for it might well be that the songs they sang were such as his. This garden of the Hesperides was sometimes thought to be the same as the fabled island of Atlantis of which we have already heard. And it was here that, guarded by a dreadful dragon, grew the golden apples which Earth gave to Hera on her marriage with Zeus.

The Hesperides is a collection of more than a thousand short poems, a few of which you have already read in this chapter.

They are not connected with each other, but tell of all manner of things.

Herrick was a religious poet too, and here is something that he wrote for children in his n.o.ble Numbers. It is called To his Saviour, a Child: A Present by a Child.

"Go, pretty child, and bear this flower Unto thy little Saviour; And tell him, by that bud now blown, He is the Rose of Sharon known.

When thou hast said so, stick it there Upon his bib or stomacher; And tell Him, for good hansel too, That thou hast brought a whistle new, Made of a clear, straight oaten reed, To charm his cries at time of need.

Tell Him, for coral, thou hast none, But if thou hadst, He should have one; But poor thou art, and known to be Even as moneyless as He.

Lastly, if thou canst win a kiss From those mellifluous lips of His; Then never take a second one, To spoil the first impression."

Herrick wrote also several graces for children. Here is one:--

"What G.o.d gives, and what we take 'Tis a gift for Christ His sake: Be the meal of beans and peas, G.o.d be thanked for those and these: Have we flesh, or have we fish, All are fragments from His dish.

He His Church save, and the king; And our peace here, like a Spring, Make it ever flourishing."

While Herrick lived his quiet, dull life and wrote poetry in the depths of Devonshire, the country was being torn asunder and tossed from horror to horror by the great Civil War. Men took sides and fought for Parliament or for King. Year by year the quarrel grew. What was begun at Edgehill ended at Naseby where the King's cause was utterly lost. Then, although Herrick took no part in the fighting, he suffered with the vanquished, for he was a Royalist at heart. He was turned out of his living to make room for a Parliament man. He left this parish without regret.

"Deanbourne, farewell; I never look to see Deane, or thy warty incivility.

Thy rocky bottom, that doth tear thy streams, And makes them frantic, ev'n to all extremes; To my content, I never should behold, Were thy streams silver, or thy rocks all gold.

Rocky thou art, and rocky we discover Thy men: and rocky are thy ways all over.

O men, O manners, now and ever known To be a rocky generation: A people currish; churlish as the seas; And rude, almost, as rudest savages: With whom I did, and may re-sojourn when Rocks turn to rivers, rivers turn to men."

Hastening to London, he threw off his sober priest's robe, and once more putting on the gay dress worn by the gentlemen of his day he forgot the troubles and the duties of a country parson.

Rejoicing in his freedom he cried:--

"London my home is: though by hard fate sent Into a long and irksome banishment; Yet since called back; henceforward let me be, O native country, repossess'd by thee."

He had no money, but he had many wealthy friends, so he lived, we may believe, merrily enough for the next fifteen years. It was during these years that the Hesperides was first published, although for a long time before many people had known his poems, for they had been handed about among his friends in ma.n.u.script.

So the years pa.s.sed for Herrick we hardly know how. In the great world Cromwell died and Charles II returned to England to claim the throne of his fathers. Then it would seem that Herrick had not found all the joy he had hoped for in London, for two years later, although rocks had not turned to rivers, nor rivers to men, he went back to his "loathed Devonshire."

After that, all that we know of him is that at Dean Prior "Robert Herrick vicker was buried ye 15th day of October 1674." Thus in twilight ends the life of the greatest lyric poet of the seventeenth century.

All the lyric poets of whom I have told you were Royalists, but the Puritans too had their poets, and before ending this chapter I would like to tell you a little of Andrew Marvell, a Parliamentary poet.

If Herrick was a lover of flowers, Marvell was a lover of gardens, woods and meadows. The garden poet he has been called.

He felt himself in touch with Nature:--

"Thus I, easy philosopher, Among the birds and trees confer,

And little now to make me wants, Or of the fowls or of the plants: Give me but wings as they, and I Straight floating in the air shall fly; Or turn me but, and you shall see I was but an inverted tree."*

*Appleton House, to the Lord Fairfax.

Yet although Marvell loved Nature, he did not live, like Herrick, far from the stir of war, but took his part in the strife of the times. He was an important man in his day. He was known to Cromwell and was a friend of Milton, a poet much greater than himself. He was a member of Parliament, and wrote much prose, but the quarrels in the cause of which it was written are matters of bygone days, and although some of it is still interesting, it is for his poetry rather that we remember and love him. Although Marvell was a Parliamentarian, he did not love Cromwell blindly, and he could admire what was fine in King Charles. He could say of Cromwell:--

"Though his Government did a tyrant resemble, He made England great, and his enemies tremble."*

*A dialogue between two Horses.

And no one perhaps wrote with more grave sorrow of the death of Charles than did Marvell, and that too in a poem which, strangely enough, was written in honor of Cromwell.

"He nothing common did, or mean, Upon that memorable scene, But with his keener eye The axe's edge did try: Nor called the G.o.ds with vulgar spite To vindicate his helpless right, But bowed his comely head, Down, as upon a bed."*

*An Horatian ode upon Cromwell's return from Ireland.