But thou, kind Prew, didst with my fates abide
As well the winter's as the summer's tide:
For which thy love, live with thy master here
Not two, but all the seasons of the year.
Thus much have I done for thy memory, Mistress Prew!
In spite of Herrick's disparagement of Deanbourn, which he calls "a rude
river," and his characterization of Devon folk as "a people currish,
churlish as the seas," the fullest and pleasantest days of his life
were probably spent at Dean Prior. He was not unmindful meanwhile of the
gathering political storm that was to shake England to its foundations.
How anxiously, in his solitude, he watched the course of events,
is attested by many of his poems. This solitude was not without its
compensation. "I confess," he says,
I ne'er invented such
Ennobled numbers for the presse
Than where I loath'd so much.
A man is never wholly unhappy when he is writing verses. Herrick was
firmly convinced that each new lyric was a stone added to the pillar of
his fame, and perhaps his sense of relief was tinged with indefinable
regret when he found himself suddenly deprived of his benefice.
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