A Ring Presented to Julia

By Robert Herrick 1591–1674 Robert Herrick

Julia, I bring

To thee this ring,

Made for thy finger fit;

To show by this

That our love is

(Or should be) like to it.

Close though it be,

The joint is free;

So when Love’s yoke is on,

It must not gall,

Or fret at all

With hard oppression.

But it must play

Still either way,

And be, too, such a yoke

As not too wide

To overslide,

Or be so strait to choke.

So we who bear

This beam must rear

Ourselves to such a height

As that the stay

Of either may

Create the burden light.

And as this round

Is nowhere found

To flaw, or else to sever;

So let our love

As endless prove,

And pure as gold for ever.

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 . . .

Continue reading this biography