英国文学 Robert Herrick

Robert Herrick罗伯特.赫里克

( Including an overview, life experience, major works and time of publication, distinguishing features of his creation and chief contributions)

Robert Herrick (1591 -1674), a bachelor all his life, was an English poet in 17th-century. He was one of the Cavalier Poets，who mainly dealt with the knight and the palace with mirth fighting for the king of the sense of honor，and its works most focused on enjoyment of real life. That is to say, life is short, the world is beautiful, love is splendid, and we must use the shortest time that we have to make the most of it. He is the most original of the “sons of Ben [Jonson],” who revived the spirit of the ancient classic lyric. He is best remembered for the line “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.”

As a boy, Herrick was apprenticed to his uncle, Sir William Herrick, a prosperous and influential goldsmith. In 1613 he went to the University of Cambridge, graduating in 1617. He took his M.A. in 1620 and was ordained in 1623. He then lived for a time in London, cultivating the society of the city’s wits, enlarging his acquaintance with writers (Ben Jonson being the most prominent) and musicians, and enjoying the round of court society. In 1627 he went as a chaplain to the Duke of Buckingham on the military expedition to the Île de Ré to relieve La Rochelle from the French Protestants. He was presented with the living of Dean Prior (1629), where he remained for the rest of his life, except when, because of his Royalist sympathies, he was deprived of his post from 1646 until after the Restoration (1660).

Page 1 of 3

As a poet, Herrick’s poems were not widely popular at the time they were published. His style was strongly influenced by Ben Jonson, by the classical Roman writers, and by the poems of the late Elizabethan era. This must have seemed quite old-fashioned to an audience whose tastes were tuned to the complexities of the metaphysical poets such as John Donne and Andrew Marvell. Herrick became well known as a poet about 1620–1630; many manuscript commonplace books from that time contain his poems. The only book that Herrick published was Hesperides (1648), which included His Noble Numbers, a collection of poems on religious subjects with its own title page dated 1647 but not previously printed. Hesperides contained about 1,400 poems, mostly very short, many of them being brief epigrams. His work appeared after that in miscellanies and songbooks; the 17th-century English composer Henry Lawes and others set some of his songs and his works were rediscovered in the early nineteenth century, and have been regularly printed ever since.

Herrick sets out his subject-matter in the poem he printed at the beginning of his collection, The Argument of his Book. He dealt with English country life and its seasons, village customs, complimentary poems to various ladies and his friends, themes taken from classical writings and a solid bedrock of Christian faith, not intellectualized but underpinning the rest.

However, Herrick has never married, and none of his love-poems seem to connect directly with any one beloved woman. He loved the richness of sensuality and the variety of life, and this is shown vividly in such poems as Cherry-ripe,

Delight in Disorder and Upon Julia’s Clothes.

Page 2 of 3

The over-riding message of Herrick’s work is that life is short, the world is beautiful, love is splendid, and we must use the short time we have to make the most of it. This message can be seen clearly in To the Virgins, to make much of Time; To Daffodils; To Blossoms; and Corinna going a-Maying, where the warmth

and exuberance of what seems to have been a kindly and jovial personality comes over strongly

In brief, Herrick has written many elegies, satires, epigrams, love songs to imaginary mistresses, marriage songs, complimentary verse to friends and patrons, and celebrations of rustic and ecclesiastical festivals. The appeal of his poetry lies in its truth to human sentiments and its perfection of form and style. Frequently light, worldly, and hedonistic, and making few pretensions to intellectual profundity, it yet covers a wide range of subjects and emotions, ranging from lyrics inspired by rural life to wistful evocations of life and love’s evanescence and fleeting beauty. Herrick’s lyrics are notable for their technical mastery and the interplay of thought, rhythm, and imagery that they display. As a poet Herrick was steeped in the classical tradition; he was also influenced by English folklore and lyrics, by Italian madrigals, by the Bible and patristic literature, and by contemporary English writers, notably Jonson and Robert Burton. It is certainly true that despite his use of classical allusions and names, his poems are easier for modern readers to understand than those of many of his contemporaries.

Page 3 of 3