Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows
The liquefaction of her clothes.
Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free,
O how that glittering taketh me.
This is no figmentary picture. The songs to Julia—most of all, the glorious Night Piece—are songs of experience. Herrick may not have loved Julia well enough to marry her, even if she had been willing, but he loved her well enough to write good verses. He could probably have said farewell to any woman as philosophically as he said farewell to sack. He was a cautious man, and a predestined bachelor. He was, indeed, a man of no very profound feeling. There is no deep tide of emotion making his verse musical. He knew love and he knew regret, but not tragically. If he wept to see the daffodils haste away so soon, we may be sure that he brushed away his tears at the sound of the dinner-bell and forgot the premature death of the flowers in cheerful conversation with his housekeeper, Prue. This does not mean that his mood was insincere; it does not mean that in To Daffodils he did not give immortal and touching expression to one of the universal sorrows of men. He comes nearer the grave music of poetry here than in any of his other poems. But the Memento mori that runs through his verses is the Memento mori of a banqueter, not of a sufferer. It is the mournfulness of a heart that has no intention of breaking.
Herrick proved a true prophet in regard to the immortality of his verse, though Hesperides made no great stir when it was published in 1648 and seems to have made no friends among critics till the end of the eighteenth century. But he never gave a wiser estimate of the quality of his work than those lines, in When he would have his verses read, where he bids us:
In sober mornings do not thou rehearse
The holy incantation of a verse;
But when that men have both well drank and fed,