More discontents I never had
Since I was born than here,
Where I have been and still am sad,
In this dull Devonshire.
Yet justly too I must confess
I ne’er invented such
Ennobled numbers for the press
As where I loathed so much.
At first sight these two passages seem contradictory, but the contradiction vanishes when we remember that Herrick’s book of sacred poems is called Noble Numbers. To these and these only, as it seems to me, the “ennobled numbers” of the second passage refers, and the plain meaning of these lines is that Herrick, as vicar of Dean Prior, felt his old powers of song-making gone, and gave his attention mainly to sacred poetry.
To the same conclusion point some lines in the “Farewell to Poetry,” written probably when he took orders:—