Robert Herrick (baptized August 24, 1591, London, England—died October 1674, Dean Prior, Devonshire) was an English cleric and poet, the most original of the “sons of Ben [Jonson],” who revived the spirit of the ancient classic lyric. He is best remembered for the line “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,” and he is counted among the Cavalier poets.
As a boy, Herrick was apprenticed to his uncle, Sir William Herrick, a prosperous and influential goldsmith. In 1613 he went to the University of Cambridge, graduating in 1617. He took his M.A. in 1620 and was ordained in 1623. He then lived for a time in London, cultivating the society of the city’s wits, enlarging his acquaintance with writers (Ben Jonson being the most prominent) and musicians, and enjoying the round of court society. In 1627 he went as a chaplain to the duke of Buckingham on the military expedition to the Île de Ré to relieve La Rochelle from the French Protestants. He was presented with the living of Dean Prior (1629), where he remained for the rest of his life, except when, because of his Royalist sympathies, he was deprived of his post from 1646 until after the Restoration (1660).
Herrick became well known as a poet about 1620–30; many manuscript commonplace books from that time contain his poems. The only book that Herrick published was Hesperides (1648), which included His Noble Numbers, a collection of poems on religious subjects with its own title page dated 1647 but not previously printed. Hesperides contained about 1,400 poems, mostly very short, many of them being brief epigrams. His work appeared after that in miscellanies and songbooks; the 17th-century English composer Henry Lawes and others set some of his songs.
Herrick wrote elegies, satires, epigrams, love songs to imaginary mistresses, marriage songs, complimentary verse to friends and patrons, and celebrations of rustic and ecclesiastical festivals. The appeal of his poetry lies in its truth to human sentiments and its perfection of form and style. Frequently light, worldly, and hedonistic and making few pretensions to intellectual profundity, it yet covers a wide range of subjects and emotions, ranging from lyrics inspired by rural life to wistful evocations of life and love’s evanescence and fleeting beauty. Herrick’s lyrics are notable for their technical mastery and the interplay of thought, rhythm, and imagery that they display. As such, they are typical of the Cavalier poets, a group identifiable by its politics—loyal to Charles I during the English Civil Wars—and the distinct tone and style of its members’ verse. As a poet, Herrick was steeped in the classical tradition; he was also influenced by English folklore and lyrics, by Italian madrigals, by the Bible and patristic literature, and by contemporary English writers, notably Jonson and Robert Burton.