To Blossoms

Fair pledges of a fruitful tree,

Why do ye fall so fast?

Your date is not so past

But you may stay yet here a while

To blush and gently smile,

And go at last.

What! were ye born to be

An hour or half’s delight,

And so to bid goodnight?

‘Tis pity Nature brought ye forth

Merely to show your worth

And lose you quite.

But you are lovely leaves, where we

May read how soon things have

Their end, though ne’er so brave;

And after they have shown their pride

Like you a while, they glide

Into the grave.

-      
Robert Herrick[1]

---

[1] Robert Herrick was born in Cheapside, London, in 1591, the seventh child of Nicholas Herrick, a prosperous goldsmith. In November 1592, two days after making a will, his father killed himself by jumping from the fourth-floor window of his house. The Queen’s Almoner had to be paid a £220 fee for not to confiscate the Herrick estate for the crown as was usually the case with suicides. There is no record of Herrick attending school, although it is possible he attended Westminster School. In 1607 he became apprenticed to his uncle Sir William Herrick as a goldsmith.

Herrick entered St. John’s College, Cambridge in 1613. He graduated a Bachelor of Arts in 1617 and Master of Arts in 1620. He became the eldest of the “Sons of Ben,” Cavalier poets who idolized Ben Jonson, mixing in literary circles in London. In 1623 Herrick was ordained an Episcopal minister and acted as chaplain to Buckingham on the expedition to the Île de Ré. In 1629 he was appointed by Charles I to the living of Dean Prior in the diocese of Exeter, a post he reluctantly accepted. There, in Devon, he lived in the seclusion of country life, and wrote some of his best work, never completely ceasing, however, to long for the pleasures of London. In 1647, under the Commonwealth, he was expelled from the priory by the Protectorate government for refusing the Solemn League and Covenant, and returned to London. In 1648 Herrick published his major collection, Hesperides, consisting of 1200 poems. Included separately in Hesperides was the subsection Noble Numbers, for the poems with sacred subjects. With the restoration of Charles II in 1660 he was returned to Devon where he died and was buried a bachelor in 1674 at the age of 83.  See p. 227 for a poem Lionel Johnson wrote a poem memorializing him.  (Source: luminarium.org)

See  the posting in this blog "To Master Robert Herrick: Upon His Death" for a poem by Lionel Johnson written in honor of Herrick.