And
take the harmless folly of the time.
We
shall grow old apace, and die
Before
we know our liberty.
Our
life is short, and our days run
As
fast away as does the sun;
And
as a vapour, or a drop of rain,
Once
lost, can ne'er be found again,
So
when or you or I are made
A
fable, song, or fleeting shade,
All
love, all liking, all delight
Lies
drown'd with us in endless night.
Then
while time serves, and we are but decaying,
Come,
my Corinna, come, let's go a-Maying.” — Robert Herrick, “Corinna’s Going a Maying,” in Hesperides:
Or, The Works Both Humane and Divine (1648)
Poet Robert Herrick, born on this
date in 1591, was among the least prolific but most curious figures in British
literature. His entire reputation rests on a single volume, Hesperides: Or, The Works Both Humane and
Divine. That slim output may have resulted from his sharp midlife turn, at
age 39, when he accepted an appointment as a country parson.
This
appointment meant more than a change in address, or even title; it also
represented a change in his circle. Because his father had committed suicide
when Robert was only 14 months old and his mother did not remarry, the aspiring
poet found a surrogate patriarch in playwright-poet Ben Jonson.
Taking its cue from Jonson, the “Sons of Ben” were a
worldly bunch, immersing themselves in classical literature and often meeting
him for “refreshments” in taverns. You get a sense of this in the frank
seductive tone of much of “Corinna’s Going a Maying.”
Like Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress,” this is
a poem that, for all its sexual imagery, is filled with heavy overtones of
impermanence and death. Both were common to the 17th century in
which these poets lived.
Indeed, the greatest link between impermanence and
death in this time was politics. Herrick’s own pastoral idyll was interrupted
when he was ousted from his country vicarage by supporters of Oliver Cromwell
because of his royalist sympathies. It would be 13 years before he would be
restored to his old post. Unfortunately, the “folly” of his time was far from “harmless.”
No
wonder he would write, “Our life is short, and our days run/As fast away as
does the sun.” He had long left any wild days and nights behind for his life in the Anglican Church, but surely he could not have foreseen that what he had accepted as his new work would itself be threatened by the larger world.
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