Robert Herrick

by Douglas Brooks-Davies

EVERYMAN'S POETRY This new series of the world's greatest poetry features the hallmarks of Everyman top-quality production and reader-friendly design along with helpful notes and critiques. Each edition is also a great value, especially for those readers beginning to explore the work of this remarkable poet.

Genres: Poetry

103 pages, Paperback

First published January 15, 1997

Reviews

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a slim collection of Herrick's poetry originally published by Everyman in 1996. Herrick was a clergyman and Cavalier poet. He probably best known now for a single poem, 'To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time'. Indeed, he's probably famous just for the first verse of that single poem:

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old time is still a-flying,
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.

That poem contains one theme that Herrick touches upon often - mortality and the need to enjoy life as much as possible in the short time we are here. The shortness of life is a constant refrain.

But Herrick's clergyhood - for want of a better word - doesn't stop him writing of love and lust. Indeed, that too is a regular theme of Cavalier poets. They admired wit - in the sense both of cleverness and humorousness - which is also reflected in this selection. Herrick, I suspect, was good company in the tavern over a flagon of sack.

Indeed two poems here - which I read in a Cavalier Poets collection - are odes to giving up sack and then going back to it again. They're funny as well as smart.

There's a handful of poems about the King or his children that to modern ears are ridiculously brown nosing and over the top. But then, as one can see from the present government of a nation across the Atlantic, Kings attract the fawning courtiers.

Is Herrick a great poet? Possibly not, but he is one of the good ones and a collection like this is worth the time it will take you to read it. Some of these poems I was familiar with from the Cavalier poets collection I mentioned before but most of them were new to me.

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Didn't really enjoy this in general, but there were a few poems that stood out more positively, some of which were much more funny than I had expected 17th century poetry to be.

Edition: this is an Everyman's edition, and I feel it's quite bad. While the introduction was okay enough (though not particularly engaging), the formatting was a bit annoying but fine, and there were some typos. However, I felt that the endnotes weren't really all that. I don't think I'll pick up an edition from this line again.

[Mark Bellerophon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A small but adequate collection of Herrick's poetry with minimal footnotes. Herrick was a Cavalier poet (the Cavalier poets being a brand of poets who were best known for their carpe diem poems). Despite being a cleric, many of Herrick's poems are surprisingly risque or sensual (for their time), although I also found myself comparing Herrick's poems those that remain to us of Pindar's--both for their carpe diem theme as well as their shared belief in the fleeting briefness of man's existence as well the faith that poetry can immortalize the poet and the person who is the object of the poem.