"
*Clucking.
**Thieving.
***His spaniel.
But Herrick did not love his country home and parish or his
people. We are told that the gentry round about loved him "for
his florid and witty discourses." But his people do not seem to
have loved these same discourses, for we are also told that one
day in anger he threw his sermon from the pulpit at them because
they did not listen attentively. He says:--
"More discontents I never had,
Since I was born, than here,
Where I have been, and still am sad,
In this dull Devonshire."
Yet though Herrick hated Devonshire, or at least said so, it was
this same wild country that called forth some of his finest
poems. He himself knew that, for in the next lines he goes on to
say:--
"Yet justly, too, I must confess
I ne'er invented such
Ennobled numbers for the press,
Than where I loathed so much."
Yet it is not the ruggedness of the Devon land we feel in
Herrick's poems. We feel rather the beauty of flowers, the
warmth of sun, the softness of spring winds, and see the greening
trees, the morning dews, the soft rains.
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