Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Volume 2 by Gilfillan, George, 1813-1878

With the Restoration, fortune began again to smile on our poet. He was replaced in his old charge, and seems to have spent the rest of his life quietly in the country, enjoying the fresh air and the old English sports--'repenting at leisure moments,' as Shakspeare has it, of the early pruriencies of his muse; or, as the same immortal bard says of Falstaff, 'patching up his old body' for a better place. The date of his death is not exactly ascertained; but he seems to have got considerably to the shady side of seventy years of age.

Herrick's poetry was for a long time little known, till worthy Nathan Drake, in his 'Literary Hours,' performed to him, as to some others, the part of a friendly resurrectionist. He may be called the English Anacreon, and resembles the Greek poet, not only in graceful, lively, and voluptuous elegance and richness, but also in that deeper sentiment which often underlies the lighter surface of his verse. It is a great mistake to suppose that Anacreon was a mere contented sensualist and shallow songster of love and wine. Some of his odes shew that, if he yielded to the destiny of being a Cicada, singing amidst the vines of Bacchus, it was despair--the despair produced by a degraded age and a bad religion--which reduced him to the necessity. He was by nature an eagle; but he was an eagle in a sky where there was no sun. The cry of a noble being, placed in the most untoward circumstances, is here and there heard in his verses, and reminds you of the voice of one of the transmuted victims of Circe, or of Ariel from that cloven pine, where he

Herrick might be by constitution a voluptuary,--and he has unquestionably degraded his genius in not a few of his rhymes,--but in him, as well as in Anacreon, Horace, and Burns, there lay a better and a higher nature, which the critics have ignored, because it has not found a frequent or full utterance in his poetry. In proof that our author possessed profound sentiment, mingling and sometimes half-lost in the loose, luxuriant leafage of his imagery, we need only refer our readers to his 'Blossoms' and his 'Daffodils.' Besides gaiety and gracefulness, his verse is exceedingly musical--his lines not only move but dance.

SONG.

1 Gather the rose-buds, while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying; And this same flower that smiles to-day To-morrow will be dying.

2 The glorious lamp of heaven, the Sun, The higher he's a-getting, The sooner will his race be run, And nearer he's to setting.

3 The age is best which is the first, When youth and blood are warmer; But being spent, the worse and worst Times, still succeed the former.

4 Then be not coy, but use your time, And, whilst ye may, go marry; For having lost but once your prime, You may for ever tarry.

CHERRY-RIPE.

Cherry-ripe, ripe, ripe, I cry; Full and fair ones; come, and buy! If so be you ask me where They do grow? I answer, there, Where my Julia's lips do smile; There's the land or cherry isle, Whose plantations fully show, All the year, where cherries grow.

THE KISS: A DIALOGUE.