![]() His charms to make the bread rise, to bring in the witch, or to scare away from the stables “the hag that rides the mare,” read like the primitive charm-songs of old English poetry, while such lyrics as "The May-pole is up" and "The Tinker’s Song" have the verve and melody of the popular song.īut, while there is in Herrick an unmistakable vein of romanticism and a kinship with the untutored melodists of folk-song, it must, at the same time, be remembered that he is one of the most classical of English lyrists. If Herrick enters into the spirit of the idyllic song of Elizabethan days, he has also an ear for that which was still more remote from the sophisticated tastes of cavalier lyrists - the folk-song of the cornfield or the chimney corner. The fame of Marlowe’s beautiful lyric, " The Passionate Shepherd to his Love", reached far into the 17th century, but, whereas already in the handling of this theme by “Ignoto” in "The Nymph’s Reply" and by Donne in "The Bait" we may detect the inrush of disillusionment, or the hardening of pastoral courtship into gallantry, Herrick’s rendering of Marlowe’s call to the greenwood in his lyric To Phyllis to love and live with him has all the virginal charm and unaffected joyance of the original. See, the clear sun, the world’s bright eye,Īgain, we may trace in Hesperides the influence of Marlowe. His fairy-poems closely resemble those queen Mab dreams. It is true that he was no Petrarchian, and held in small esteem that union of chivalrous sentiment and Platonic idealism which went to the making of the great English sonnet sequences in the last decade of the 16th century but, while he followed his master, Ben Jonson, in drawing his inspiration from the classical lyrists of Greece and Rome rather than from those of the Italian renascence, he, nevertheless, entered into that heritage of song which had come down from the homelier strains of the Elizabethan song-books and miscellanies, and was ever ready to attune his lyre to the music of Marlowe, Shakespeare and Campion. Herrick is often spoken of as a cavalier lyrist but it is well to remember that he is much more than this, and that his lyre called into being melodies for which the typical cavalier lyrists - Carew and Suckling - recked little or nothing, but which would have found attentive ears among the contemporaries of Marlowe, Breton and Shakespeare. The 1200 short poems which go to form Hesperides may fitly be regarded as marking the supreme achievement of renascence song. (from the Cambridge History of English and American Literature, 1921): This collection of 1200 poems of his lyrical poetry was published under his direction. ![]() He spent some time preparing his lyric poems for publication, and had them printed in 1648 under the title Hesperides or the Works both Human and Divine of Robert Herrick, dedicated to the Prince of Wales (the future Charles II). He then returned to London, living in Westminster and depending on the charity of his friends and family. In 1647, in the wake of the English Civil War, Herrick was removed as vicar of Dean Prior for refusing the Solemn League and Covenant.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |