The
Herricks were not a family of goldsmiths and lapidaries for nothing. The
accurate touch of the artificer in jewels and costly metals was one
of the gifts transmitted to Robert Herrick. Much of his work is as
exquisite and precise as the chasing on a dagger-hilt by Cellini; the
line has nearly always that vine-like fluency which seems impromptu,
and is never the result of anything but austere labor. The critic who,
borrowing Milton's words, described these carefully wrought poems as
"wood-notes wild" showed a singular lapse of penetration. They are full
of subtle simplicity. Here we come across a stanza as severely cut as an
antique cameo--the stanza, for instance, in which the poet speaks of his
lady-love's "winter face"--and there a couplet that breaks into unfading
daffodils and violets. The art, though invisible, is always there. His
amatory songs and catches are such poetry as Orlando would have liked to
hang on the boughs in the forest of Arden. None of the work is hastily
done, not even that portion of it we could wish had not been done at
all.
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