Sweet, be not proud of those two eyes
Which starlike sparkle in their skies;
Nor be you proud, that you can see
All hearts your captives; yours yet free:
Be you not proud of that rich hair
Which wantons with the lovesick air;
Whenas thatruby which you wear,
Sunk from the tip of your soft ear,
Will last to be a precious stone
When all your world’s of beauty gone.
What God gives, and what we take,
‘Tis a gift for Christ, His sake:
Be the meal of beans and peas,
God be thanked for those and these:
Have we flesh, or have we fish,
All are fragments from His dish.
He His Church save, and the king;
And our peace here, like a spring,
Make it ever flourishing.
Julia, I bring
To thee this ring,
Made for thy finger fit;
To show by this
That our love is
(Or should be) like to it.
Close though it be,
The joint is free;
So when Love’s yoke is on,
It must not gall,
Or fret at all
With hard oppression.
But it must play
Still either way,
And be, too, such a yoke
As not too wide
To overslide,
Or be so strait to choke.
So we who bear
This beam must rear
Ourselves to such a height
As that the stay
Of either may
Create the burden light.
And as this round
Is nowhere found
To flaw, or else to sever;
So let our love
As endless prove,
And pure as gold for ever.
I’ll hope no more
For things that will not come;
And if they do, they prove but cumbersome.
Wealth brings much woe;
And, since it fortunes so,
‘Tis better to be poor
Than so t’ abound
As to be drown’d
Or overwhelm’d with store.
Pale care, avaunt!
I’ll learn to be content
With that small stock Thy bounty gave or lent.
What may conduce
To my most healthful use,
Almighty God, me grant;
But that, or this,
That hurtful is,
Deny Thy suppliant.
Here, here I live with what my board
Can with the smallest cost afford;
Though ne’er so mean the viands be,
They well content my Prue and me:
Or pea or bean, or wort or beet,
Whatever comes, Content makes sweet.
Here we rejoice, because no rent
We pay for our poor tenement;
Wherein we rest, and never fear
The landlord or the usurer.
The quarter-day does ne’er affright
Our peaceful slumbers in the night:
We eat our own, and batten more,
Because we feed on no man’s score;
But pity those whose flanks grow great,
Swell’d with the lard of other’s meat.
We bless our fortunes, when we see
Our own beloved privacy;
And like our living, where we’re known
To very few, or else to none.
Prew was Herrick’s housemaid Prewdence Baldwin.
‘Viands’ is food. A ‘usurer’ is one who lends money at an unreasonable rate of interest. The ‘quarter-day’ was one of four days of the year regarded as the beginning of a new season or quarter; quarterly payments were due then. A ‘score’ is a running account. ‘Lard’ is ‘fat,’ specifically of pork.
Whenas in silks my Julia goes,
Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes.
Next, when I cast mine eyes, and see
That brave vibration each way free,
O how that glittering taketh me!
Wantons we are; and though our words be such,
Our lives do differ from our lines by much.
Herrick closed one volume of poetry (Hebrides) with another couplet, apologizing for his bawdier verses: “To his book’s end this line he’d have placed:/ Jocund his muse was, but his life was chaste.”
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying.
The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he’s a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he’s to setting.
That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.
Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry:
For having lost but once your prime,
You may forever tarry.