Though his
pieces had been set to music by such composers as Lawes, Ramsay, and
Laniers, and his court poems had naturally won favor with the Cavalier
party, Herrick cut but a small figure at the side of several of his
rhyming contemporaries who are now forgotten. It sometimes happens
that the light love-song, reaching few or no ears at its first singing,
outlasts the seemingly more prosperous ode which, dealing with some
passing phase of thought, social or political, gains the instant
applause of the multitude. In most cases the timely ode is somehow
apt to fade with the circumstance that inspired it, and becomes the
yesterday's editorial of literature. Oblivion likes especially to get
hold of occasional poems. That makes it hard for feeble poets laureate.
Mr. Henry James once characterized Alphonse Daudet as "a great little
novelist." Robert Herrick is a great little poet. The brevity of his
poems, for he wrote nothing _de longue haleine_, would place him among
the minor singers; his workmanship places him among the masters.
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