Friday Poetry: Robert Herrick

Happy Friday!

I hope you all have some good weekend plans. I have been doing lots of reading for my dissertation prep and I think I am beginning to get an idea on what to do.

My chosen poem today is by Robert Herrick who was a seventeenth-century ‘Cavalier Poet’. The Cavalier poets were named this because they supported King Charles during the English Civil War. Herrick wrote over 2000 poems during his lifetime.

To Daffodils

Fair daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon;
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attain'd his noon.
Stay, stay,
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the evensong;
And, having prayed together, we
Will go with you along.

We have short time to stay, as you,
We have as short a spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay,
As you, or anything.
We die,
As your hours do, and dry
Away,
Like to the summer's rain;
Or as the pearls of morning's dew,
Ne'er to be found again.

Robert Herrick

Happy Reading