The Bad Season Makes the Poet Sad

By Robert Herrick 1591–1674 Robert Herrick

Dull to myself, and almost dead to these

My many fresh and fragrant mistresses;

Lost to all music now, since everything

Puts on the semblance here of sorrowing.

Sick is the land to th' heart, and doth endure

More dangerous faintings by her desp'rate cure.

But if that golden age would come again

And Charles here rule, as he before did reign;

If smooth and unperplex'd the seasons were

As when the sweet Maria lived here;

I should delight to have my curls half drown'd

In Tyrian dews, and head with roses crown'd.

And once more yet (ere I am laid out dead)

Knock at a star with my exalted head.

Biography

Almost forgotten in the eighteenth century, and in the nineteenth century alternately applauded for his poetry’s lyricism and condemned for its “obscenities,” Robert Herrick is, in the latter half of the twentieth century, finally becoming recognized as one of the most accomplished nondramatic poets of his age. Long dismissed as merely a “minor poet” and, as a consequence, neglected or underestimated by scholars and critics, the . . .

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