THE POETRY OF THE PURITAN AGE
Lyrical Verse.—The second quarter of the seventeenth century witnessed an outburst of song that owed its inspiration to Elizabethan lyrical verse.
Soon after 1600 a change in lyric poetry is noticeable. The sonnet fell into disfavor with the majority of lyrists. The two poets of greatest influence over this period, Ben Jonson and John Donne, opposed the sonnet. Ben Jonson complained that it compels all ideas, irrespective of their worth, to fill a space of exactly fourteen lines, and that it therefore operates on the same principle as the bed of Procrustes. The lyrics of this period, with the exception of those by Milton, were usually less idealistic, ethereal, and inspired than the corresponding work of the Elizabethans. This age was far more imitative, but it chose to imitate Jonson and Donne in preference to Shakespeare. The greatest lyrical poet of this time thus addresses Jonson as a patron saint:—
"Candles I'll give to thee,
And a new altar;
And thou, Saint Ben, shall be
Writ in my psalter."[2]
Cavalier Poets.—Robert Herrick (1591-1674), Thomas Carew (1598?-1639?), Sir John Suckling (1609-1642), and Richard Lovelace (1618—1658) were a contemporary group of lyrists who are often called Cavalier poets, because they sympathized with the Cavaliers or adherents of Charles I.
[Illustration: ROBERT HERRICK.]
By far the greatest of this school is Robert Herrick, who stands in the front rank of the second class of lyrical poets. He was a graduate of Cambridge University, who by an accident of the time became a clergyman. The parish, or "living," given him by the king, was in the southwestern part of Devonshire. By affixing the title Hesperides to his volume of nearly thirteen hundred poems, Herrick doubtless meant to imply that they were chiefly composed in the western part of England. In the very first poem of this collection, he announces the subject of his songs:—
"I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers;
Of April, May, of June, and July flowers.
I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes;
Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal cakes
* * * * *
I write of groves, of twilights, and I sing
The court of Mab, and of the Fairie-king.
I write of hell; I sing and ever shall,
Of heaven, and hope to have it after all."
His lyric range was as broad as these lines indicate. The most of his poems show the lightness of touch and artistic form revealed in the following lines from To the Virgins:—
"Gather ye rose-buds while ye may:
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles to-day,
To-morrow will be dying."