Robert
Herrick
baptized Aug. 24, 1591, London, Eng.
died October 1674, Dean Prior, Devonshire
English cleric and poet, the most original of
the “sons of Ben [Jonson],” who revived the
spirit of the ancient classic lyric. He is best
remembered for the line “Gather ye rosebuds
while ye may.”
As a boy, Herrick was apprenticed to his
uncle, Sir William Herrick, a prosperous and
influential goldsmith. In 1613 he went to the
University of Cambridge, graduating in 1617. He
took his M.A. in 1620 and was ordained in 1623.
He then lived for a time in London, cultivating
the society of the city’s wits, enlarging his
acquaintance with writers (Ben Jonson being the
most prominent) and musicians, and enjoying the
round of court society. In 1627 he went as a
chaplain to the Duke of Buckingham on the
military expedition to the Île de Ré to relieve
La Rochelle from the French Protestants. He was
presented with the living of Dean Prior (1629),
where he remained for the rest of his life,
except when, because of his Royalist sympathies,
he was deprived of his post from 1646 until
after the Restoration (1660).
Herrick became well known as a poet about
1620–30; many manuscript commonplace books from
that time contain his poems. The only book that
Herrick published was Hesperides (1648), which
included His Noble Numbers, a collection of
poems on religious subjects with its own title
page dated 1647 but not previously printed.
Hesperides contained about 1,400 poems, mostly
very short, many of them being brief epigrams.
His work appeared after that in miscellanies and
songbooks; the 17th-century English composer
Henry Lawes and others set some of his songs.
Herrick wrote elegies, satires, epigrams,
love songs to imaginary mistresses, marriage
songs, complimentary verse to friends and
patrons, and celebrations of rustic and
ecclesiastical festivals. The appeal of his
poetry lies in its truth to human sentiments and
its perfection of form and style. Frequently
light, worldly, and hedonistic, and making few
pretensions to intellectual profundity, it yet
covers a wide range of subjects and emotions,
ranging from lyrics inspired by rural life to
wistful evocations of life and love’s
evanescence and fleeting beauty. Herrick’s
lyrics are notable for their technical mastery
and the interplay of thought, rhythm, and
imagery that they display. As a poet Herrick was
steeped in the classical tradition; he was also
influenced by English folklore and lyrics, by
Italian madrigals, by the Bible and patristic
literature, and by contemporary English writers,
notably Jonson and Robert Burton.
