Vive velut rapto: fugitivaque gaudia carpe:
 Perdiderit nullum vita reversa diem.

457. While Fates permit. From Seneca, Herc. Fur. 177:—

Dum Fata sinunt,
 Vivite laeti: properat cursu
 Vita citato, volucrique die
 Rota praecipitis vertitur anni.

459. With Horace (IV. Od. ix. 29):—

Paulùm sepultae distat inertiae
 Celata virtus.

465. The parting Verse or charge to his Supposed Wife when he travelled. MS. variants of this poem are found at the British Museum in Add. 22, 603, and in Ashmole MS. 38. Their title, "Mr. Herrick's charge to his wife," led Mr. Payne Collier to rashly identify with the poet a certain Robert Herrick married at St. Clement Danes, 1632, to a Jane Gibbons. The variants are numerous, but not very important. In l. 4 we have "draw wooers" for "draw thousands"; ll. 11-16 are transposed to after l. 28; and "Are the expressions of that itch" is written "As emblems will express that itch"; ll. 27, 28 appear as:—

"For that once lost thou needst must fall
 To one, then prostitute to all:

And we then have the transposed passage:—

Nor so immurèd would I have
 Thee live, as dead, or in thy grave;
 But walk abroad, yet wisely well
 Keep 'gainst my coming sentinel.
 And think each man thou seest doth doom
 Thy thoughts to say, I back am come.

Farther on we have the rather pretty variant:—

"Let them call thee wondrous fair,
 Crown of women, yet despair".

Eight lines lower "virtuous" is read for "gentle," and the omission of some small words throws some light on a change in Herrick's metrical views as he grew older. The words omitted are bracketed:—

"[And] Let thy dreams be only fed
 With this, that I am in thy bed.
 And [thou] then turning in that sphere,
 Waking findst [shall find] me sleeping there.
 But [yet] if boundless lust must scale
 Thy fortress and must needs prevail
 'Gainst thee and force a passage in," etc.

Other variants are: "Creates the action" for "That makes the action"; "Glory" for "Triumph"; "my last signet" for "this compression"; "turn again in my full triumph" for "come again, As one triumphant," and "the height of womankind" for "all faith of womankind".

The body sins not, 'tis the will, etc. A maxim of law Latin: Actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea.

466. To his Kinsman, Sir Thos. Soame, son of Sir Stephen Soame, Lord Mayor of London, 1589, and of Anne Stone, Herrick's aunt. Sir Thomas was Sheriff of London, 1635, M.P. for the City, 1640, and died Jan., 1670. See Cussan's Hertfortshire. (Hundred of Edwinstree, p. 100.)

470. Few Fortunate. A variant on the text (Matt. xx. 16): "Many be called but few chosen".

479. To Rosemary and Bays. The use of rosemary and bays at weddings forms a section in Brand's chapter on marriage customs (ii. 119). For the gilding he quotes from a wedding sermon preached in 1607 by Roger Hacket: "Smell sweet, O ye flowers, in your native sweetness: be not gilded with the idle art of man". The use of gloves at weddings forms the subject of another section in Brand (ii. 125). He quotes Ben Jonson's Silent Woman; "We see no ensigns of a wedding here, no character of a bridal; where be our scarves and our gloves?"

483. To his worthy friend, M. Thomas Falconbrige. As Herrick hints at his friend's destiny for a public career, it seemed worth while to hunt through the Calendar of State Papers for a chance reference to this Falconbridge, who so far has evaded editors. He is apparently the Mr. Thomas Falconbridge who appears in various papers between 1640 and 1644, as passing accounts, and in the latter year was "Receiver-General at Westminster".

Towers reared high, etc. Cp. Horace, Od. II. x. 9-12.

Saepius ventis agitatur ingens
 Pinus, et celsae graviore casu
 Decidunt turres, feriuntque summos
 Fulgura montes.

486. He's lord of thy life, etc. Seneca, Epist. Mor. iv.: Quisquis vitam suam contempsit tuae dominus est. Quoted by Montaigne, I. xxiii.

488. Shame is a bad attendant to a state. From Seneca, Hippol. 431: Malus est minister regii imperii pudor.

He rents his crown that fears the people's hate. Also from Seneca, Oedipus, 701: Odia qui nimium timet regnare nescit.

496. To his honoured kinsman, Sir Richard Stone, son of John Stone, sergeant-at-law, the brother of Julian Stone, Herrick's mother. He died in 1660.

To this white temple of my heroes. Ben Jonson's admirers were proud to call themselves "sealed of the tribe of Ben," and Herrick, a devout Jonsonite, seems to have imitated the idea so far as to plan sometimes, as here, a Temple, sometimes a Book (see infra, 510), sometimes a City (365), a Plantation (392), a Calendar (545), a College (983), of his own favourite friends, to whom his poetry was to give immortality. The earliest direct reference to this plan is in his address to John Selden, the antiquary (365), in which he writes:—

"A city here of heroes I have made
 Upon the rock whose firm foundation laid
 Shall never shrink; where, making thine abode,
 Live thou a Selden, that's a demi-god".

It is noteworthy that the poems which contain the clearest reference to this Temple (or its variants) are mostly addressed to kinsfolk, e.g., this to Sir Richard Stone, to Mrs. Penelope Wheeler, to Mr. Stephen Soame, and to Susanna and Thomas Herrick. Other recipients of the honour are Sir Edward Fish and Dr. Alabaster, Jack Crofts, Master J. Jincks, etc.

497. All flowers sent, etc. See Virgil's—or the Virgilian—Culex, ll. 397-410.

Martial's bee. See Epig. IV. xxxii.

De ape electro inclusa.
 Et latet et lucet Phaethontide condita gutta,
 Ut videatur apis nectare clausa suo.
 Dignum tantorum pretium tulit illa laborum.
 Credibile est ipsam sic voluisse mori.

500. To Mistress Dorothy Parsons. This "saint" from Herrick's Temple may certainly be identified with the second of the three children (William, Dorothy, and Thomasine) of Mr. John Parsons, organist and master of the choristers at Westminster Abbey, where he was buried in 1623. Herrick addresses another poem to her sister Thomasine:—

"Grow up in beauty, as thou dost begin,
 And be of all admired, Thomasine".

502. 'Tis sin to throttle wine. Martial, I. xix. 5: Scelus est jugulare Falernum.

506. Edward, Earl of Dorset, Knight of the Garter, grandson of Thomas Sackville, author of Gorboduc. He succeeded his brother, Richard Sackville, the third earl, in 1624, and died in 1652. Clarendon describes a duel which he fought with Lord Bruce in Flanders.

Of your own self a public theatre. Cp. Burton (Democ. to Reader) "Ipse mihi theatrum".

510. To his Kinswoman, Mrs. Penelope Wheeler. See Note on 130.

511. A mighty strife 'twixt form and chastity. Lis est cum formâ magna pudicitiæ. Quoted from Ovid by Burton, who translates: "Beauty and honesty have ever been at odds".

514. To the Lady Crew, upon the death of her child. This must be the child buried in Westminster Abbey, according to the entry in the register "163⅞, Feb. 6. Sir Clipsy Crewe's daughter, in the North aisle of the monuments." Colonel Chester annotates: "She was a younger daughter, and was born at Crewe, 27th July, 1631. She died on the 4th of February, and must have been an independent heiress, as her father administered to her estate on the 24th May following."

515. Here needs no Court for our Request. An allusion to the Court of Requests, established in the time of Richard II. as a lesser Court of Equity for the hearing of "all poor men's suits". It was abolished in 1641, at the same time as the Star Chamber.

517. The new successor drives away old love. From Ovid, Rem. Am. 462: Successore novo vincitur omnis amor.

519. Born I was to meet with age. Cp. 540. From Anacreon, 38 [24]:—

Ἐπείδη βρότος ἐτέχθην,
Βιότου τρίβον ὁδεύειν, Χρόνον ἔγνων ὃν παρῆλθον,
 Ὅν δ' ἔχω δραμεῖν οὐκ οἶδα·
 Μέθετέ με, φρονίιδες·
 Μηδέν μοι καὶ ὑμῖν ἔστω.
 Πρὶν ἐμὲ φθάσῃ τὸ τέρμα,
 Παίξω, γελάσω, χορεύσω,
 Μετὰ τοῦ καλοῦ Λυαίου.

520. Fortune did never favour one. From Dionys. Halicarn. as quoted by Burton, II. iii. 1, § 1.

521. To Phillis to love and live with him. A variant on Marlowe's theme: "Come live with me and be my love". Donne's The Bait (printed in Grosart's edition, vol. ii. p. 206) is another.

522. To his Kinswoman, Mistress Susanna Herrick, wife of his elder brother Nicholas.

523. Susanna Southwell. Probably a daughter of Sir Thomas Southwell, for whom Herrick wrote the Epithalamium (No. 149).

525. Her pretty feet, etc. Cp. Suckling's "Ballad upon a Wedding":—

"Her feet beneath her petticoat,
 Like little mice stole in and out,
 As if they feared the light".

526. To his Honoured Friend, Sir John Mynts. John Mennis, a Vice-Admiral of the fleet and knighted in 1641, refused to join in the desertion of the fleet to the Parliament. After the Restoration he was made Governor of Dover and Chief Comptroller of the Navy. He was one of the editors of the collection called Musarum Deliciæ (1656), in the first poem of which there is an allusion to—

"That old sack
 Young Herrick took to entertain
 The Muses in a sprightly vein".

527. Fly me not, etc. From Anacreon, 49 [34]:—

Μή με φύγῃς, ὁρῶσα
 Τὰν πολιὰν ἔθειραν· ...
 Ὅρα κἀν στεφάνοισιν
 Ὅπως πρέπει τὰ λευκὰ
 Ῥόδοις κρίν' ἐμπλακέντα.

529. As thou deserv'st be proud. Cp. Hor. III. Od. xxx. 14:—

Sume superbiam
 Quaesitam meritis et mihi Delphica
 Lauro cinge volens, Melpomene, comam.

534. To Electra. Printed in Witts Recreations, 1650, where it is entitled To Julia.

536. Ill Government.... When kings obey, etc. From Seneca, Octav. 581:—

Male imperatur, cum regit vulgus duces.

545. To his Worthy Kinsman, Mr. Stephen Soame (the son or, less probably, the brother of Sir Thomas Soame): One of my righteous tribe. Cp. Note to 496.

547. Great spirits never with their bodies die. Tacit. Agric. 46:—"Si quis piorum manibus locus, si, ut sapientibus placet, non cum corpore extinguuntur magnae animae".

554. Die thou canst not all. Hor. IV. Od. xxx. 6,7.

556. The Fairies. Cp. the old ballad of Robin Goodfellow:—

"When house or hearth doth sluttish lie,
 I pinch the maids both black and blue";

and Ben Jonson's Entertainment at Althorpe, etc.

557. M. John Weare, Councellour. Probably the same as "the much-lamented Mr. J. Warr" of 134.

Law is to give to every one his own. Cicero, De Fin. v.: Animi affectio suum cuique tribuens Justitia dicitur.

564. His Kinswoman, Bridget Herrick, eldest daughter of his brother Nicholas.

565. The Wanton Satyr. See Sir E. Dyer's The Shepherd's Conceit of Prometheus:—

"Prometheus, when first from heaven high
 He brought down fire, ere then on earth not seen,
 Fond of delight, a Satyr standing by
 Gave it a kiss, as it like sweet had been.
 ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
 The difference is—the Satyr's lips, my heart,
 He for a time, I evermore, have smart."

So Euphues: "Satirus not knowing what fire was would needs embrace it and was burnt;" and Sir John Davies, False and True Knowledge.

Transcriber's Endnotes

Numeration Errors in the Hesperides:

Without an obvious solution to a discrepancy the numbers remain as originally printed, however the following alterations have been made to ensure any details in the NOTES section apply to the relevant poem.

Typographical Errors:

Unresolved Errors:

The following errors remain as printed:

ROBERT HERRICK

THE HESPERIDES & NOBLE
NUMBERS: EDITED BY
ALFRED POLLARD
WITH A PREFACE BY
A. C. SWINBURNE

Vol. II.

REVISED EDITION

LONDON:
LAWRENCE & BULLEN, Ltd.,
16 Henrietta Street, W.C.
1898.		 NEW YORK:
LAWRENCE & BULLEN, Ltd.,
153-157 Fifth Avenue
1898.

Transcriber's Note

Original spelling and punctuation has been retained.

All Greek words have mouse-hover transliterations, Κύματα κακῶν, and appear as printed in the original volume.

Obvious typesetting errors have been corrected without note, however additional corrections have been recorded in the Transcriber's Endnotes at the end of the text.

HESPERIDES.

569. A HYMN TO THE GRACES.

When I love (as some have told,
 Love I shall when I am old),
 O ye Graces! make me fit
 For the welcoming of it.
 Clean my rooms, as temples be,
 T' entertain that deity.
 Give me words wherewith to woo,
 Suppling and successful too;
 Winning postures, and, withal,
 Manners each way musical:
 Sweetness to allay my sour
 And unsmooth behaviour.
 For I know you have the skill
 Vines to prune, though not to kill,
 And of any wood ye see,
 You can make a Mercury.

Suppling, softening.
Mercury, god of eloquence and inventor of the lyre.

570. TO SILVIA.

No more, my Silvia, do I mean to pray
 For those good days that ne'er will come away.
 I want belief; O gentle Silvia, be
 The patient saint, and send up vows for me.

573. THE POET HATH LOST HIS PIPE.

I cannot pipe as I was wont to do,
 Broke is my reed, hoarse is my singing, too;
 My wearied oat I'll hang upon the tree,
 And give it to the sylvan deity.

574. TRUE FRIENDSHIP.

Wilt thou my true friend be?
 Then love not mine, but me.

575. THE APPARITION OF HIS MISTRESS CALLING
HIM TO ELYSIUM.

Desunt nonnulla ——

Come then, and like two doves with silv'ry wings,
 Let our souls fly to th' shades where ever springs
 Sit smiling in the meads; where balm and oil,
 Roses and cassia crown the untill'd soil.
 Where no disease reigns, or infection comes
 To blast the air, but ambergris and gums
 This, that, and ev'ry thicket doth transpire,
 More sweet than storax from the hallowed fire,
 Where ev'ry tree a wealthy issue bears
 Of fragrant apples, blushing plums, or pears;
 And all the shrubs, with sparkling spangles, shew
 Like morning sunshine tinselling the dew.
 Here in green meadows sits eternal May,
 Purfling the margents, while perpetual day
 So double gilds the air, as that no night
 Can ever rust th' enamel of the light.
 Here, naked younglings, handsome striplings, run
 Their goals for virgins' kisses; which when done,
 Then unto dancing forth the learned round
 Commixed they meet, with endless roses crown'd.
 And here we'll sit on primrose-banks, and see
 Love's chorus led by Cupid; and we'll be
 Two loving followers, too, unto the grove
 Where poets sing the stories of our love.
 There thou shalt hear divine Musæus sing
 Of Hero and Leander; then I'll bring
 Thee to the stand, where honour'd Homer reads
 His Odysseys and his high Iliads;
 About whose throne the crowd of poets throng
 To hear the incantation of his tongue:
 To Linus, then to Pindar; and that done,
 I'll bring thee, Herrick, to Anacreon,
 Quaffing his full-crown'd bowls of burning wine,
 And in his raptures speaking lines of thine,
 Like to his subject; and as his frantic
 Looks show him truly Bacchanalian-like
 Besmear'd with grapes, welcome he shall thee thither,
 Where both may rage, both drink and dance together.
 Then stately Virgil, witty Ovid, by
 Whom fair Corinna sits, and doth comply
 With ivory wrists his laureate head, and steeps
 His eye in dew of kisses while he sleeps;
 Then soft Catullus, sharp-fang'd Martial,
 And towering Lucan, Horace, Juvenal,
 And snaky Persius, these, and those, whom rage
 (Dropt for the jars of heaven) fill'd t' engage
 All times unto their frenzies,—thou shalt there
 Behold them in a spacious theatre.
 Among which glories, crowned with sacred bays
 And flatt'ring ivy, two recite their plays—
 Beaumont and Fletcher, swans to whom all ears
 Listen, while they, like syrens in their spheres,
 Sing their Evadne; and still more for thee
 There yet remains to know than thou can'st see
 By glim'ring of a fancy. Do but come,
 And there I'll show thee that capacious room
 In which thy father Jonson now is plac'd,
 As in a globe of radiant fire, and grac'd
 To be in that orb crown'd, that doth include
 Those prophets of the former magnitude,
 And he one chief; but hark, I hear the cock
 (The bellman of the night) proclaim the clock
 Of late struck one, and now I see the prime
 Of day break from the pregnant east: 'tis time
 I vanish; more I had to say,
 But night determines here, away.

Purfling, trimming, embroidering.
Round, rustic dance.
Comply, encircle.
Their Evadne, the sister of Melantius in their play "The Maid's Tragedy".

576. LIFE IS THE BODY'S LIGHT.

Life is the body's light, which once declining,
 Those crimson clouds i' th' cheek and lips leave shining.
 Those counter-changed tabbies in the air
 (The sun once set) all of one colour are.
 So, when Death comes, fresh tinctures lose their place,
 And dismal darkness then doth smutch the face.

Tabbies, shot silks.

579. LOVE LIGHTLY PLEASED.

Let fair or foul my mistress be,
 Or low, or tall, she pleaseth me;
 Or let her walk, or stand, or sit,
 The posture hers, I'm pleas'd with it;
 Or let her tongue be still, or stir,
 Graceful is every thing from her;
 Or let her grant, or else deny,
 My love will fit each history.

580. THE PRIMROSE.

Ask me why I send you here
 This sweet Infanta of the year?
 Ask me why I send to you
 This primrose, thus bepearl'd with dew?
 I will whisper to your ears:
 The sweets of love are mix'd with tears.
Ask me why this flower does show
 So yellow-green, and sickly too?
 Ask me why the stalk is weak
 And bending (yet it doth not break)?
 I will answer: These discover
 What fainting hopes are in a lover.

581. THE TITHE. TO THE BRIDE.

If nine times you your bridegroom kiss,
 The tenth you know the parson's is.
 Pay then your tithe, and doing thus,
 Prove in your bride-bed numerous.
 If children you have ten, Sir John
 Won't for his tenth part ask you one.

Sir John, the parson.

582. A FROLIC.

Bring me my rosebuds, drawer, come;
 So, while I thus sit crown'd,
 I'll drink the aged Cæcubum,
 Until the roof turn round.

Drawer, waiter.
Cæcubum, Cæcuban, an old Roman wine.

583. CHANGE COMMON TO ALL.

All things subjected are to fate;
 Whom this morn sees most fortunate,
 The evening sees in poor estate.

584. TO JULIA.

The saints'-bell calls, and, Julia, I must read
 The proper lessons for the saints now dead:
 To grace which service, Julia, there shall be
 One holy collect said or sung for thee.
 Dead when thou art, dear Julia, thou shalt have
 A trentall sung by virgins o'er thy grave:
 Meantime we two will sing the dirge of these,
 Who dead, deserve our best remembrances.

Trentall, a service for the dead.

585. NO LUCK IN LOVE.

I do love I know not what,
 Sometimes this and sometimes that;
 All conditions I aim at.
But, as luckless, I have yet
 Many shrewd disasters met
 To gain her whom I would get.
Therefore now I'll love no more
 As I've doted heretofore:
 He who must be, shall be poor.

586. IN THE DARK NONE DAINTY.

Night hides our thefts, all faults then pardon'd be;
 All are alike fair when no spots we see.
 Lais and Lucrece in the night-time are
 Pleasing alike, alike both singular:
 Joan and my lady have at that time one,
 One and the self-same priz'd complexion:
 Then please alike the pewter and the plate,
 The chosen ruby, and the reprobate.

Lais and Lucrece, opposite types of incontinence and purity. Cp. 665, 885.

587. A CHARM, OR AN ALLAY FOR LOVE.

If so be a toad be laid
 In a sheep's-skin newly flay'd,
 And that tied to man, 'twill sever
 Him and his affections ever.

590. TO HIS BROTHER-IN-LAW, MASTER JOHN
WINGFIELD.

For being comely, consonant, and free
 To most of men, but most of all to me;
 For so decreeing that thy clothes' expense
 Keeps still within a just circumference;
 Then for contriving so to load thy board
 As that the messes ne'er o'erlade the lord;
 Next for ordaining that thy words not swell
 To any one unsober syllable:
 These I could praise thee for beyond another,
 Wert thou a Winstfield only, not a brother.

Consonant, harmonious.

591. THE HEADACHE.

My head doth ache,
 O Sappho! take
 Thy fillet,
 And bind the pain,
 Or bring some bane
 To kill it.
But less that part
 Than my poor heart
 Now is sick;
 One kiss from thee
 Will counsel be
 And physic.

592. ON HIMSELF.

Live by thy muse thou shalt, when others die
 Leaving no fame to long posterity:
 When monarchies trans-shifted are, and gone,
 Here shall endure thy vast dominion.

593. UPON A MAID.

Hence a blessed soul is fled,
 Leaving here the body dead;
 Which since here they can't combine,
 For the saint we'll keep the shrine.

596. UPON THE TROUBLESOME TIMES.

O times most bad,
 Without the scope
 Of hope
 Of better to be had!
Where shall I go,
 Or whither run
 To shun
 This public overthrow?
No places are,
 This I am sure,
 Secure
 In this our wasting war.
Some storms we've past,
 Yet we must all
 Down fall,
 And perish at the last.

597. CRUELTY BASE IN COMMANDERS.