Though it may have been said
three hundred years ago, it is as modern as yesterday; though it may
have been said yesterday, it has the trick of seeming to have been
always in our keeping. This quality of remoteness and nearness belongs,
in a striking degree, to Herrick's poems. They are as novel to-day as
they were on the lips of a choice few of his contemporaries, who, in
reading them in their freshness, must surely have been aware here and
there of the ageless grace of old idyllic poets dead and gone.
Herrick was the bearer of no heavy message to the world, and such
message as he had he was apparently in no hurry to deliver. On this
point he somewhere says:
Let others to the printing presse run fast;
Since after death comes glory, I 'll not haste.
He had need of his patience, for he was long detained on the road by
many of those obstacles that waylay poets on their journeys to the
printer.
Herrick was nearly sixty years old when he published the "Hesperides."
It was, I repeat, no heavy message, and the bearer was left an
unconscionable time to cool his heels in the antechamber.
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