The book of the collected lyrics of Robert Herrick, beau tifully entitled
The richly varied subject matter of Herricles art is summed up in an introductory poem, "The Argument of His Book.° First in the list stands nature, in its individual objects of grace and beauty, and all the exquisite perceptions of the sense: Laing of brooks, of blossoms, birds and bowers, Of April, May. of June and July flowers.
Mel come the customs, ceremonies and fairy fancies of the folk; then love and "cleanly wantonness,* and finally religion. Herrick is essentially a hedonist, delicately sensitive to beauty in all its myriad forms. He is the liter ary descendant of the ancient lyrists — of An acreon, Horace and Catullus; and again of the Elizabethans, especially Ben Jonson, in the ros ter of whose "sons* he was proud to place himself. The qualities of his poetry are spon taneity, simplicity and a lyric grace which places him above all rivals. The deeper ranges of
spiritual and moral experience were foreign to lien, and the element of thought is almost en tirely absent from his work, save for the ever recurring idea of the shortness of life and the speedy decay youth and beauty, which im parts a wistful melancholy to his verse. He counsels us. like Horace, to pluck the flowers of life while yet we may enjoy them. In his love poems Herrick is never deeply serious. The numerous girls he celebrates are for him Like the lilies and violets and morning dews, of a beauty as exquisite and as fleeting. Hence he is almost entirely without the note of sensu ality which characterizes the work of many of his contemporaries.
A few of Herrick's lyrics — "To Corinna Going
"To Daffodils,>> "Gather ye Rosebuds,)) etc.—are universally familiar, but he reaches as high a level in many others. The