There
is nothing spiritual about him.
After Herrick left college we know little of his life for eight
or nine years. He lived in London, met Ben Jonson and all the
other poets and writers who flocked about great Ben. He went to
court no doubt, and all the time he wrote poems. It was a gay
and cheerful life which, when at length he was given the living
of Dean Prior in Devonshire, he found it hard to leave.
It was then that he wrote his farewell to poetry. He says:--
"I, my desires screw from thee, and direct
Them and my thought to that sublim'd respect
And conscience unto priesthood."
It was hard to go. But yet he pretends at least to be resigned,
and he ends by saying:--
"The crown of duty is our duty: Well--
Doing's the fruit of doing well. Farewell."
For eighteen years Herrick lived in his Devonshire home, and we
know little of these years. But he thought sadly at times of the
gay days that were gone. "Ah, Ben!" he writes to Jonson,
"Say how, or when
Shall we thy guests
Meet at those lyric feasts
Made at the Sun,
The Dog, the Triple Tun?
Where we such clusters had,
As made us nobly wild, not mad;
And yet each verse of thine
Out-did the meat, out-did the frolic wine.
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