As you, or anything.
We die,
As your hours do; and dry
Away
Like to the summer rain,
Or as the pearls of morning dew,
Ne'er to be found again."
Herrick's works are his "Hesperides" and his "Noble Numbers," the latter being religious, and not equal to the former.
In religious tone, intensity, and grandeur, George Herbert (b., 1593; d., 1633) is his superior. Herbert was in early life a courtier; his eldest brother being the celebrated sceptical writer, Lord Herbert of Cherbury. Herbert's hopes of Court preferment fortunately ceasing with the death of King James, he took orders, grew extremely religious, married an admirable wife, and retired to Bemerton parsonage, about a mile from Salisbury, where he died of consumption at the age of forty. Herbert was the very personification of Chaucer's "Good Parson." His life was one constant scene of piety and benevolence. Beloved by his parishioners, happy in his congenial wife, and passionately fond of music and his poetry, his days glided away as already in heaven. The music which he loved was poured into his poetry, which overflows with tender and profound feeling, the most chaste and seraphic imagination, and the most fervent devotion. James Montgomery, of later times, not a little resembled him in his pure and beautiful piety; but there is in Herbert a greater vigour, more dignity of style, and finer felicity of imagery. There is a gravity, a sublimity, and a sweetness which mingle in his devotional lyrics, and endear them for ever to the heart. His "Temple" is a poetic fabric worthy of a Christian minstrel, and stands as an immortal refutation of the oft-repeated theory, that religious poetry cannot be at once original and attractive. What can be more noble than the following stanzas from his poem entitled "Man"?—
"For us the winds do blow;