By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Robert Herrick (1591-1674), known as one of the ‘Cavalier poets’, was a Royalist who, following the English Civil War and the execution of King Charles I in 1649, penned this poem grieving for the loss of the king: ‘everything / Puts on the semblance here of sorrowing.’ For Herrick, the whole land seems to grieve for Charles and the loss to the kingdom that his death signifies.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Glow-worms, shooting stars, and elves: all can be found in ‘The Night Piece: To Julia’, a charming poem by the seventeenth-century poet Robert Herrick. And that’s just the first three lines! The last line invites a sexual reading, a sign of the thinly-veiled eroticism that pervades Herrick’s Julia poems. (Though here we might add foot-fetishism as well.) Before we offer a few words of analysis of this charming poem, here’s a reminder of it.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Algernon Charles Swinburne called Robert Herrick (1591-1674) the ‘greatest songwriter ever born of English race’. In this post, we’ve chosen ten of Robert Herrick’s best poems, most of which are beautifully short lyrics about a number of themes, from religion to love to untidy clothes. We hope you enjoy this pick of the finest Herrick poems.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Robert Herrick (1591-1674) was an English Cavalier poet, whose 1648 collection Hesperides contains much of his great poetry. Algernon Charles Swinburne called Herrick the ‘greatest songwriter ever born of English race’. ‘Delight in Disorder’ is one of his most famous poems.
Delight in Disorder
A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness;
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction;
An erring lace, which here and there
Enthrals the crimson stomacher;
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribands to flow confusedly;
A winning wave, deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat;
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Robert Herrick (1591-1674) was an English Cavalier poet, whose 1648 collection Hesperides contains much of his great poetry. Algernon Charles Swinburne called Herrick the ‘greatest songwriter ever born of English race’. A number of Herrick’s poems, including ‘To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time’, ‘Delight in Disorder’, and ‘Corinna’s Going a Maying’ – but it is ‘Upon Julia’s Clothes’, an intriguing little poem of just six lines, which is the focus of our analysis here.