Robert Herrick
Robert Herrick
Robert Herrickwas a 17th-century English lyric poet and cleric. He is best known for Hesperides, a book of poems. This includes the carpe diem poem "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time", with the first line "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may"...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth24 August 1591
excel life lives man strive twice virtue
Each must in virtue strive for to excel ; That man lives twice that lives the first life well
beam center cherry drowned half marked red rose shows within
Upon the Nipples of Julia's Breast: Have ye beheld (with much delight) A red rose peeping through a white? Or else a cherry (double graced) Within a lily? Center placed? Or ever marked the pretty beam A strawberry shows half drowned in cream?
american-president attempt hard
Attempt the end, and never stand to doubt. Nothing's so hard but search will find it out.
bed last man master
A master of a house, as I have read, must be the first man up and the last in bed
clothes disorder sweet
A sweet disorder in the dress, kindles in clothes a wantonness
love pray
You say to me - wards your affection's strong; Pray love me little, so you love me long
art careless precise tie wave whose wild winning
A winning wave (deserving note) / In the tempestuous petticoat: / A careless shoe-string, in whose tie / I see a wild civility: / Do more bewitch me than when art / Is too precise in every part.
lime love sweet
What is a kiss? Why this, as some approve: The sure, sweet cement, glue, and lime of love
according fortunes labor pains
If little labor, little are our gains; man's fortunes are according to his pains
answer ask cherry cry fair full lips
Cherry ripe, ripe, ripe, I cry / Full and fair ones; come and buy; / If so be, you ask me where / They do grow? I answer there, / Where my Julia's lips do smile; / There's the land, or cherry-isle.
child cold either fall lift though
Here a little child I stand, / Heaving up my either hand; / Cold as paddocks though they be, / Here I lift them up to Thee, / For a benison to fall / On our meat, and on us all. Amen.
flower gather smiles time tomorrow
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, old Time is still a-flying. And this same flower that smiles today, tomorrow will be dying.
exalted head laid star
And once more yet (ere I am laid out dead)Knock at a star with my exalted head
innocent repentance repent
Who after his transgression doth repent, Is halfe, or altogether, innocent.