Bid me to weep, and I will weep
While I have eyes to see;
And, having none, yet I will keep
A heart to weep for thee.

Bid me despair, and I'll despair
Under that cypress-tree;
Or bid me die, and I will dare
E'en death to die for thee.

Thou art my life, my love, my heart,

The very eyes of me,

And hast command of every part

To live and die for thee.

Robert Herrick.

213

TO MEADOWS

YE have been fresh and green,
Ye have been fill'd with flowers,
And ye the walks have been

Where maids have spent their hours.

You have beheld how they
With wicker arks did come

To kiss and bear away

The richer cowslips home.

You've heard them sweetly sing,
And seen them in a round:
Each virgin like a spring,

With honeysuckles crown'd.

But now we see none here

Whose silvery feet did tread,

And with dishevell'd hair

Adorn'd this smoother mead.

Like unthrifts, having spent

Your stock and needy grown,
Y'are left here to lament
Your poor estates, alone.

Robert Herrick.

Good-morning to this primrose too,
Good-morrow to each maid

That will with flowers the tomb bestrew

Wherein my love is laid.

Ah! woe is me, woe, woe is me !

Alack and well-a-day!

For pity, sir, find out that bee

Which bore my love away.

I'll seek him in your bonnet brave,
I'll seek him in your eyes;

Nay, now I think they've made his grave
I' th' bed of strawberries.

I'll seek him there: I know ere this

The cold, cold earth doth shake him,
But I will go, or send a kiss

By you, sir, to awake him.

Pray, hurt him not though he be dead!
He knows well who do love him,
And who with green turfs rear his head,
And who do rudely move him.

He's soft and tender (pray take heed !).
With bands of cowslips bind him,
And bring him home! But 'tis decreed
That I shall never find him.

Robert Herrick.

216

TO DAISIES, NOT TO SHUT SO SOON

SHUT not so soon: the dull-ey'd night

Has not as yet begun

To make a seizure on the light,

Or to seal up the sun.

No marigolds yet closed are,

No shadows great appear,

Nor doth the early shepherd's star
Shine like a spangle here.

O, stay but till my Julia close

Her life-begetting eye,

And let the whole world then dispose

Itself to live or die!

217

ΤΟ ΟΕΝΟΝΕ

Robert Herrick.

WHAT conscience, say, is it in thee,
When I a heart had one,

To take away that heart from me,
And to retain thy own?

REACH, with your whiter hands, to me

Some crystal of the spring,

And I about the cup shall see

Fresh lilies flourishing.

Or else, sweet nymphs, do you but this:

To the glass your lips incline,

And I shall see by that one kiss

The water turn'd to wine.

Robert Herrick.

219

THE PRIMROSE

Ask me why I send you here
This sweet Infanta of the year?
Ask me why I send to you

This primrose, thus bepearl'd with dew?
I will whisper to your ears :-

The sweets of love are mix'd with tears.

Ask me why this flower does show

So yellow-green, and sickly too?
Ask me why the stalk is weak
And bending (yet it doth not break)?
I will answer :- -These discover
What fainting hopes are in a lover.

Robert Herrick.

Next, Virgil I'll call forth
To pledge this second health
In wine, whose each cup's worth
An Indian commonwealth.

A goblet next I'll drink
To Ovid, and suppose,

Made he the pledge, he'd think
The world had all one nose.

Then this immensive cup

Of aromatic wine,

Catullus, I quaff up

To that terse muse of thine !

Wild I am now with heat:

O Bacchus, cool thy rays,

Or, frantic, I shall eat

Thy thyrse, and bite the bays!

Round, round the roof does run,
And, being ravish'd thus,
Come, I will drink a tun
To my Propertius.

Now, to Tibullus, next,

This flood I drink to thee!

But stay, I see a text

That this presents to me :

'Behold, Tibullus lies

Here burnt, whose small return

Of ashes scarce suffice

To fill a little urn.'

Trust to good verses then :
They only will aspire
When pyramids, as men,
Are lost i' the funeral fire;

And when all bodies meet
In Lethe to be drown'd,
Then only numbers sweet
With endless life are crown'd.

Robert Herrick.