Robert Herrick (1591–1674) was an English lyric poet and clergyman, a follower of Ben Jonson, whose single book, Hesperides, contains more than a thousand short poems on love, flowers, country festivals and the brevity of life. Little read in his own time, he is now admired as one of the most graceful poets of the seventeenth century.
A goldsmith's son
Robert Herrick was born in London in 1591, the son of a goldsmith who died, probably by suicide, when Robert was a year old. He was apprenticed to his uncle, Sir William Herrick, a rich goldsmith and jeweller to the king, before going to Cambridge at twenty-two.
In London he became one of the Sons of Ben, the young poets gathered around the playwright Ben Jonson in the taverns of the city. He absorbed Jonson's love of the classical poets, especially Horace, Catullus and Anacreon.
The vicar of Dean Prior
Ordained in the Church of England, Herrick was appointed in 1629 vicar of Dean Prior, a remote parish on the edge of Dartmoor, in Devon. He sometimes complained of his exile from London, yet the customs, festivals and landscapes of the countryside fill his poems.
During the Civil War his royalist sympathies cost him his living, and in 1647 he was expelled by the Puritan authorities and returned to London. He was restored to his parish after the return of Charles II, and died at Dean Prior in 1674, aged eighty-three.
Hesperides
In 1648 Herrick published Hesperides, a volume of more than eleven hundred poems, with a section of religious verse called Noble Numbers. Many are addressed to imaginary mistresses, Julia, Corinna, Anthea, and celebrate their beauty, their clothes and the fleeting moment.
The book appeared in the middle of the Civil War and attracted little notice; Herrick was almost forgotten for a century and a half. Rediscovered in the nineteenth century, his lyrics were set to music and anthologised, and To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time became one of the most famous poems in English.
Anecdotes
A pet pig
According to stories collected in Dean Prior long after his death, Herrick kept a pet pig that he taught to drink from a tankard, and once threw his sermon at his congregation because they were not paying attention. The tales may owe more to legend than to fact.
Julia's clothes
One of Herrick's best-known short poems, Upon Julia's Clothes, describes in six lines the shimmer of silk as his imaginary mistress walks by. It is often quoted as a perfect example of the musical precision of his verse.
Frequently asked questions
What is Herrick's only book?
Hesperides (1648), which includes a section of sacred poems called Noble Numbers.
What is carpe diem poetry?
Poetry that urges the reader to seize the day and enjoy youth and love before time takes them away, a theme inherited from the Latin poet Horace and dear to Herrick.
Who were the Sons of Ben?
The young poets, including Herrick, Thomas Carew and Sir John Suckling, who gathered around Ben Jonson in the 1620s and admired his classical style.