ROBERT HERRICK'S POEM - COMFORT TO A YOUTH THAT HAD LOST HIS LOVE

  

On the 24 th day of the Blog chatter’s #WRITEAPAGEADAY, Here is a poem with love as the major theme.

 

Poet: Robert Herrick

Poem:   COMFORT TO A YOUTH THAT HAD LOST HIS LOVE

WHAT needs complaints,
When she a place
Has with the race
    Of saints?

In endless mirth
She thinks not on
What 's said or done
    In Earth.

She sees no tears,
Or any tone
Of thy deep groan
    She hears:

Nor does she mind
Or think on 't now
That ever thou
    Wast kind;

But changed above,
She likes not there,
As she did here,
    Thy love.

Forbear therefore,
And lull asleep
Thy woes, and weep
    No more.

Robert Herrick was born in 1591 in London, the seventh child of Nicholas Herrick, a wealthy goldsmith who was a Clergyman and poet.  Robert Herrick worked initially for his uncle as an apprentice goldsmith in London before attending Cambridge. In 1623, he was ordained as a priest and acted as chaplain to the Duke of Buckingham on the expedition to La Rochelle. In 1629 he was appointed to the living of Dean Prior in Devon by Charles I, but was ejected in 1647 under the Commonwealth for refusing the Solemn League and Covenant. He was restored to the living in 1662 after the Restoration of the monarchy, having lived in the meantime in Westminster.

 

Herrick wrote some 2,500 poems, publishing his major collection, Hesperides, in 1648, which contains about half of them. His poetry shows considerable diversity of form, with imitations of the Roman poets Horace and Catallus, epistles, epigrams, love poetry, and folk songs, many of which were later set to music.