Hesperides by Robert Herrick
**Overview of "Hesperides" by Robert Herrick**
"Hesperides" is a celebrated collection of poetry by 17th-century English poet Robert Herrick, first published in 1648. The title references the mythical Hesperides, nymphs who guarded golden apples, suggesting themes of beauty and desire throughout the work. Comprising approximately twelve hundred poems, the collection showcases Herrick's mastery of lyricism, with a focus on rural life, love, and the fleeting nature of time, as reflected in his famous lines "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may." The poems were largely composed during Herrick's time as vicar in Dean Prior, Devonshire, where the pastoral landscape inspired much of his writing.
Herrick's poetic style is characterized by its Anacreontic influences, emphasizing the celebration of pleasures and the carpe diem philosophy. He engages with a variety of forms, from madrigals to epigrams, often intertwining humor, satire, and spiritual reflections. While Herrick's work reflects his personal experiences and social observations, it also addresses broader themes of mortality, love, and the complexities of human relationships. Despite his initial obscurity, "Hesperides" has since garnered recognition as a significant contribution to English literature, capturing the essence of 17th-century poetic traditions and the human experience.
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Hesperides by Robert Herrick
First published: 1648; includes Noble Numbers, 1647
Type of work: Poetry
The Work:
“As thou deserv’st, be proud; then gladly let/ The Muse give thee the Delphick Coronet.” This brief epigram, one of hundreds Robert Herrick included in his collection of twelve hundred poems, best describes the pride with which he presented his Hesperides and the recognition he received after years of neglect. His subtitle indicates the inclusion in one volume of his Hesperides and his Noble Numbers, a group of ecclesiastical poems, prayers, hymns, and apothegms dated 1647. This collection, together with fifteen or so poems discovered by nineteenth century scholars and about twice the number recovered later in manuscript, constitute the literary remains of one of the finest lyricists in the English language.
The arrangement of the poems in Hesperides (the title is a conceit based on the legend of nymphs who guarded with a fierce serpent the golden apples of the goddess Hera) is whimsical. Most of the lyrics were composed in Devonshire, where Herrick was vicar of Dean Prior from 1629 until the Puritan victories caused his removal from his parish in 1647. Restored to his living in 1662, he lived until his death in the West Country, which had inspired his pagan-spirited, rustic verse.
The great Herrick scholar L. C. Martin discovered a chronology, from the collation of many manuscripts, which indicates the four general periods in which these poems were composed, carefully rewritten, and then painstakingly published. From the time of his apprenticeship to his goldsmith uncle at least one poem remains, “A Country Life,” which may have been one of the reasons why the youthful poet was allowed to terminate his service and go to Cambridge. Though Herrick’s activities during his university period are remembered chiefly for the letters he wrote asking his uncle for money, he also composed a variety of commendatory poems and memory verses. One, the longest poem he wrote, is addressed to a fellow student who was ordained in 1623.
The second period, and perhaps the most important, was from 1617 to 1627, when he became the favorite of the “sons” of Ben Jonson. Herrick’s famous poem, “His Fare-well to Sack,” epitomizes these formative years of good talk, wide reading, witty writing, and good fellowship. In this poem, too, are the names of the poets who most influenced him—Anacreon, Horace, and by implication Catullus and Theocritus. The well-known “The Argument of His Book” echoes the pastoral strain in the poet’s declaration of his literary interests:
I sing of Brooks, of Blossomes, Birds, and Bowers:
The Dean Prior vicar’s hope for heaven seems to be based on his “cleanly-Wantonnesse,” even if one considers his many mistresses—Corinna, stately Julia, smooth Anthea, and sweet Electra—as imaginary, the idealized woman of poetic tradition. Herrick’s philosophy is Anacreontic, taking the carpe diem attitude of the Cavalier poets. The best-known example from his work, in his own time as well as currently, is “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time,” which begins: “Gather ye Rosebuds while ye may.”
That Herrick was a man of his time may be ascertained by a glance at the rich variety of his poetic subjects. Set in the form of the madrigal, “Corinna’s going a Maying,” catches all the excitement of the festival in the most intricate of singing forms. A ballad in the manner of Campion is “Cherrie-ripe,” one which deserves to be better known:
Cherrie-Ripe, Ripe, Ripe, I cry
In the manner of William Shakespeare he composed “The mad Maids Song,” with the same “Good Morrows” and the strewing of flowers for the tomb, but in this instance the lament is for a lover killed by a bee sting. In the style of Christopher Marlowe and then Sir Walter Ralegh, Herrick continues the Elizabethan shepherd-maiden debate in “To Phillis to love, and live with him”:
Thou shalt have Ribbands, Roses, Rings,
As a disciple of Jonson with a master of arts degree (1620), Herrick never forgot his classical background. As an epigrammatist he was without peer, especially since he injected strong originality into a conventional and satiric form. He often made his parishioners models for these satiric verses, as in this comment on one man’s discomfiture:
Urles had the Gout so, that he co’d not stand;
Nor does he spare himself and his friends: “Wantons we are; and though our words be such,/ Our Lives do differ from our Lines by much.”
An extension of this mode is Herrick’s Anacreontic verse. In “To Bacchus, a Canticle” he begs the god of revelry and reproduction to show him the way to have more than one mistress. Somewhat more restrained and in the vein of Catullus are his lyrics to Lesbia and the epithalamia with which he greeted his many friends and relatives who, despite all his verses, insisted on getting married. In “The cruell Maid” he echoes, or is echoed by, his contemporary, Andrew Marvell:
Give my cold lips a kisse at last:
The more humble and bucolic songs of Horace, however, were the poet’s abiding love. While he may have wished for the court rather than the parish, his best work was composed amid peaceful surroundings on pleasant rural subjects. His “To Daffadills” is a more delicate and subtle poem than the well-known lyric by William Wordsworth:
Faire Daffadills, we weep to see
In the final period represented in Hesperides, “His returne to London” is a significant poem illustrating the sophisticated side of his genius, the pomp and circumstance which made a lasting poetry for this faithful royalist. He sings here “O Place! O People! Manners! fram’d to please/ All Nations, Customes, Kindreds, Languages!” as he links himself with his Elizabethan patron saints, the Renaissance man who took all life and all things for their province.
“And here my ship rides having Anchor cast,” he writes in his concluding poems of the book which he sent forth to find “a kinsman or a friend.” He honestly thought and in fact knew “The Muses will weare blackes, when I am dead.” Ironically, his death went almost unnoticed, though his verses were recalled in oral tradition for many years before the recovery of his work by modern scholarship—a most appropriate tribute to the man who gives such a vivid picture of the folk and their wassails, harvests, wakes, and loves.
Bibliography
Coiro, Ann Baynes. “Herrick’s Hesperides: The Name and the Frame.” Journal of English Language History 52, no. 2 (Summer, 1985): 311-336. Deals with the political and social conflicts that affected Hesperides. Questions Herrick’s apparent royalism, seeing ambiguity in his poetry’s praise of the political establishment of his time.
Deming, Robert H. Ceremony and Art: Robert Herrick’s Poetry. The Hague, the Netherlands: Mouton, 1974. Stresses the ceremonial and liturgical aspects of Herrick’s poetry, emphasizing the influence of Anglican theological precepts upon his approaches to artistic endeavor.
Guibbory, Achsah. “Robert Herrick: Religious Experience in the ’Temple’ of Hesperides.” In Ceremony and Community from Herbert to Milton: Literature, Religion, and Cultural Conflict in Seventeenth-Century England. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Analyzes Hesperides within the context of seventeenth century religious conflict, demonstrating how the poem reflects the contemporary debate over ceremonial worship.
Hesler, M. Thomas. “Herrick’s Masque of Death.” In The English Civil Wars in the Literary Imagination, edited by Claude J. Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999. Examines how Hesperides and Herrick’s other poems reflect and depict the English civil war.
Marcus, Leah S. “Robert Herrick.” The Cambridge Companion to English Poetry, Donne to Marvell, edited by Thomas N. Corns. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Most of the fourteen essays focus on the work of individual poets, including Marcus’s article about Herrick. Other essays provide context for these poets’ work by discussing politics, religion, gender politics, genre, and tradition in the early seventeenth century.
Moorman, F. W. Robert Herrick: A Biographical and Critical Study. London: John Lane, 1910. One of the first extended studies of Hesperides and of Herrick’s other poetry. Contains useful biographical information. Still the foundation to an understanding of Herrick’s poetry.
Rollin, Roger B. Robert Herrick. Boston: Twayne, 1966. Comprehensive study of Hesperides, providing analysis of the major thematic elements, expositions of individual poems, and biographical and historical data.
‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “Witty by Design: Robert Herrick’s Hesperides.” In The Wit of Seventeenth-Century Poetry, edited by Claude J. Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1995. Examines Herrick’s use of humor in the collection.
Rollin, Roger B., and J. Max Patrick, eds.“Trust to Good Verses”: Herrick Tercentenary Essays. Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1978. A series of essays covering a variety of subjects related to Herrick, such as his love poetry, mysticism, and historical sources. Includes bibliography