For brave comportment, wit without offence, Words fully flowing, yet of influence, Thou art that man of men, the man alone Worthy the public admiration; Who with thine own eyes read’st what we do write, And giv’st our numbers euphony and weight; Tell’st when a verse springs high; how understood To be, or not, born […]

God hath two wings which He doth ever move; The one is mercy, and the next is love: Under the first the sinners ever trust; And with the last He still directs the just.

Till I shall come again, let this suffice, I send my salt, my sacrifice To thee, thy lady, younglings, and as far As to thy Genius and thy Lar; To the worn threshold, porch, hall, parlour, kitchen, The fat-fed smoking temple, which in The wholesome savour of thy mighty chines, Invites to supper him who […]

Here we securely live, and eat The cream of meat; And keep eternal fires, By which we sit, and do divine, As wine And rage inspires. If full, we charm; then call upon Anacreon To grace the frantic Thyrse: And having drunk, we raise a shout Throughout, To praise his verse. Then cause we Horace […]

Life of my life, take not so soon thy flight, But stay the time till we have bade good-night. Thou hast both wind and tide with thee; thy way As soon dispatch’d is by the night as day. Let us not then so rudely henceforth go Till we have wept, kiss’d, sigh’d, shook hands, or […]

All things decay with time: The forest sees The growth and down-fall of her aged trees; That timber tall, which three-score lustres stood The proud dictator of the state-like wood, I mean the sovereign of all plants, the oak, Droops, dies, and falls without the cleaver’s stroke.

DEDICATED TO HIS PECULIAR FRIEND, MR JOHN WICKES, UNDER THE NAME OF POSTUMUS Ah, Posthumus! our years hence fly And leave no sound: nor piety, Or prayers, or vow Can keep the wrinkle from the brow; But we must on, As fate does lead or draw us; none, None, Posthumus, could e’er decline The doom […]

Dull to myself, and almost dead to these, My many fresh and fragrant mistresses; Lost to all music now, since every thing Puts on the semblance here of sorrowing. Sick is the land to th’ heart; and doth endure More dangerous faintings by her desperate cure. But if that golden age would come again, And […]

A wearied pilgrim I have wander’d here, Twice five-and-twenty, bate me but one year; Long I have lasted in this world; ’tis true But yet those years that I have lived, but few. Who by his gray hairs doth his lustres tell, Lives not those years, but he that lives them well: One man has […]

Come thou, who art the wine and wit Of all I’ve writ; The grace, the glory, and the best Piece of the rest; Thou art of what I did intend The All, and End; And what was made, was made to meet. Thee, thee my sheet. Come then, and be to my chaste side Both […]

Born I was to be old, And for to die here; After that, in the mould Long for to lie here. But before that day comes, Still I be bousing; For I know, in the tombs There’s no carousing.

A funeral stone Or verse, I covet none; But only crave Of you that I may have A sacred laurel springing from my grave: Which being seen Blest with perpetual green, May grow to be Not so much call’d a tree, As the eternal monument of me.

Lost to the world; lost to myself; alone Here now I rest under this marble stone, In depth of silence, heard and seen of none.

Weep for the dead, for they have lost this light; And weep for me, lost in an endless night; Or mourn, or make a marble verse for me, Who writ for many. BENEDICTE.

Laid out for dead, let thy last kindness be With leaves and moss-work for to cover me; And while the wood-nymphs my cold corpse inter, Sing thou my dirge, sweet-warbling chorister! For epitaph, in foliage, next write this: HERE, HERE THE TOMB OF ROBIN HERRICK IS!

Sadly I walk’d within the field, To see what comfort it would yield; And as I went my private way, An olive-branch before me lay; And seeing it, I made a stay, And took it up, and view’d it; then Kissing the omen, said Amen; Be, be it so, and let this be A divination […]

If after rude and boisterous seas My wearied pinnace here finds ease; If so it be I’ve gain’d the shore, With safety of a faithful oar; If having run my barque on ground, Ye see the aged vessel crown’d; What’s to be done? but on the sands Ye dance and sing, and now clap hands. […]

Ye silent shades, whose each tree here Some relique of a saint doth wear; Who for some sweet-heart’s sake, did prove The fire and martyrdom of Love:– Here is the legend of those saints That died for love, and their complaints; Their wounded hearts, and names we find Encarved upon the leaves and rind. Give […]

Happily I had a sight Of my dearest dear last night; Make her this day smile on me, And I’ll roses give to thee!

Among the myrtles as I walk’d Love and my sighs thus intertalk’d: Tell me, said I, in deep distress, Where I may find my Shepherdess? –Thou fool, said Love, know’st thou not this? In every thing that’s sweet she is. In yond’ carnation go and seek, There thou shalt find her lip and cheek; In […]