Rejoicing in his freedom he cried:--
"London my home is: though by hard fate sent
Into a long and irksome banishment;
Yet since called back; henceforward let me be,
O native country, repossess'd by thee."
He had no money, but he had many wealthy friends, so he lived, we
may believe, merrily enough for the next fifteen years. It was
during these years that the Hesperides was first published,
although for a long time before many people had known his poems,
for they had been handed about among his friends in manuscript.
So the years passed for Herrick we hardly know how. In the great
world Cromwell died and Charles II returned to England to claim
the throne of his fathers. Then it would seem that Herrick had
not found all the joy he had hoped for in London, for two years
later, although rocks had not turned to rivers, nor rivers to
men, he went back to his "loathed Devonshire."
After that, all that we know of him is that at Dean Prior "Robert
Herrick vicker was buried ye 15th day of October 1674.
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