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.