What God gives and what we take,
’Tis a gift for Christ His sake;
Be the meal of beans and pease,
God be thanked for those and these.
Have we flesh or have we fish,
All are fragments from His dish.
He His Church save and the King,
And our peace here like a spring
Send it ever flourishing.
If I may indulge in a little fancy, I should say that this last was written for some small Dean Prior “maid”; written on one of those delicious balmy days which a Devonshire spring sometimes, though not, alas! always, brings; written during the first half of Herrick’s first incumbency, when peace still “flourished” at Dean Prior, though perhaps the shadows of the coming trouble were not unfelt by those who could read the signs of the times. Both these “Graces” always seem to me to have a peculiar charm and freshness, and even by themselves they would go far to justify the view that has been maintained in this essay, that Herrick’s genius, if hampered and enfeebled in some ways, was in other ways matured and mellowed by his sojourn in “dull Devonshire.”