Robert Herrick (1591 – 1674)
17th century English poet.
Fair pledges of a fruitful tree,
Why do ye fall so fast?
Your date is not so past
But you may stay yet here awhile
To blush and gently smile,
And go at last.
A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness.
Cherry ripe, ripe, ripe, I cry,
Full and fair ones; come and buy!
If so be you ask me where
They do grow, I answer, there,
Where my Julia's lips do smile;
There's the land, or cherry-isle.
So when or you or I are made
A fable, song, or fleeting shade,
All love, all liking, all delight
Lies drowned with us in endless night.
Art quickens nature; care will make a face; Neglected beauty perisheth apace.
A winning wave, deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat,
A careless shoestring, in whose tie
I see a wild civility,
Do more bewitch me than when art
Is too precise in every part.
You say to me-wards your affection's strong;
Pray love me little, so you love me long.
Some asked how pearls did grow, and where?
Then spoke I to my girl
To part her lips, and showed them there
The quarelets of pearl.
'Tis sin,
Nay, profanation to keep in.
Bid me despair, and I'll despair,
Under that cypress tree;
Or bid me die, and I will dare
E'en Death, to die for thee.
Her eyes the glow-worm lend thee,
The shooting stars attend thee;
And the elves also,
Whose little eyes glow
Like the sparks of fire, befriend thee.
Some asked me where the rubies grew,
And nothing I did say;
But with my finger pointed to
The lips of Julia.
I saw a flie within a beade
Of amber cleanly buried.
Attempt the end, and never stand to doubt;
Nothing's so hard but search will find it out.
God doth not promise here to man that He
Will free him quickly from his misery;
But in His own time, and when He thinks fit,
Then He will give a happy end to it.
Night makes no difference 'twixt the Priest and Clerk;
Joan as my Lady is as good i' the dark.
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;
Oh how that glittering taketh me!
Fall on me like a silent dew,
Or like those maiden showers
Which, by the peep of day, do strew
A baptism o’er the flowers.
If well thou hast begun, go on fore-right
It is the end that crowns us, not the fight.
What is a kiss? Why this, as some approve:
The sure, sweet cement, glue, and lime of love.